Movieline Online

So what’s it gonna take to put you into a new movie today? Honestly, for most physical media fans, there’s no arm twisting necessary. Even if, as in the case of The Himalayan (1976), it’s not an essential piece of cinema history, the urge to “get-em-all” is pretty hard to resist. And this Golden Harvest production adds a few wrinkles that make it just unique enough to pull the trigger. Hatching a scheme to wed his half-brother to the daughter of a wealthy Tibetan landowner, Kao Chu (Chan Sing) winds up using a body-double to finish the job then backstabbing his way up the family ladder. Meanwhile, poor Ching Lam (Angela Mao) is framed for adultery and must join forces with her childhood crush (Dorian Tan) to learn the mysterious Mi style of martial arts and get revenge. A busy man during Golden Harvest’s early years, Wong Fung wasn’t the studio’s most innovative director but he certainly knew what Angela Mao was capable of. Even though she’s second billed, the actress still domina...

Time travel movies usually ask big philosophical questions. G.I. Samurai (1979) asks a much more important one: if a modern military platoon got sent back to the feudal era, how long would it take before someone fired a bazooka at a horse? The answer is: not long at all. Directed by Kosei Saito, this wonderfully violent Japanese cult film crashes a convoy of Japan Self-Defense Force soldiers into the Warring States era after a fog-covered supernatural event. Suddenly, tanks, helicopters and machine guns are sharing the battlefield with samurai swords, flaming arrows and warlords who react to modern technology with the same excitement and terror most people have trying to pair their new Bluetooth headphones. GI Samurai treats its high-concept setup with just enough seriousness to drop a few moral and philosophical nuggets on historical and modern Japanese aggression. One minute, soldiers are debating the ethics of interfering with history. The next, someone’s mowing down cavalry with ...

Every decade or so Hollywood declares an arms race. “Gentlemen, we simply MUST make our devastating volcano/killer asteroid/underwater monster movie before they do!” And it’s great fun to watch studios take a crack and the same material from sometimes radically different angles. In the early ‘80s it was the super vehicle trend. Clint Eastwood’s Firefox (1982) revolved around the theft of a hypersonic Russian jet armed with advanced thought controls. But 1983’s Blue Thunder stuck closer to home – Los Angeles, to be precise - with a rogue cop uncovering a domestic conspiracy after hijacking a military super chopper. Murphy (Roy Scheider) is a stoic police pilot who still struggles with his ‘Nam flashbacks and hints of paranoia. But just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you! In this case it’s Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell) who's knee-deep in a plot to deploy military-grade weaponry to suppress potential insurrection…personal privacy and civi...

Visual Vengeance is back with, well, with a vengeance. Their latest trio of discoveries feels less like a curated collection (they’re each sold separately, by the way) than a transmission from an alternate universe where regional horror, backyard martial arts movies and late-night cable access television evolved into the dominant media species. Fungicide (2002) is the sort of movie that could only emerge from the 2000s DIY horror boom, where digital cameras, fake blood and a few free weekends resulted in a full-blown creature-feature spoof about carnivorous mushrooms. At least director Dave Wascavage has a sense of humor about the whole thing, bringing his monsters to life with sock puppets and spirit glue, interrupted by some early CGI work. It’s too long by a good half hour, but still earned itself a slot on RiffTrax , which is included as a special feature. The Screaming (2002) gets bonus points for skewering Scientology before it was trendy. Indoctrinated into Crystalnetics b...

Beginnings are tricky. Is it better to peak early or set yourself up for the long haul? When it comes to Golden Harvest, formed by three veterans of the well-established Shaw Brothers studio, the trick wasn’t topping their rival studio right out of the gate, but establishing a more talent-friendly home base to build upon. And their first two productions – 1970’s The Angry River and The Invincible Eight – might have lost the battle…but won the war. The Angry River leans into wuxia fantasy territory, overstuffed with myths, monsters and all the trappings of a Nordic fairy tale. It even does the unthinkable: sidelining star Angela Mao as a damsel in distress after trading her skills to save her sick father. It’s a rush of ideas and genres that never quite clicks but always entertains, even when switching protagonists at the halfway point. Meanwhile, The Invincible Eight pivots to straightforward swordplay, gathering a team of fighters for a “Men on a Mission” adventure to settle an ...

Celebrity romances are basically modern fairy tales, swapping out castles for press junkets, princes for movie stars and happily ever after for an obligatory producer’s credit. Romancing in Thin Air (2012) plays in the same space at Notting Hill , where fame is a roadblock to true love onscreen and off. It’s all very meta. And director Johnnie To takes things a step further with a movie within a movie third act that nudges his characters toward a make or break reunion. After being dumped at the altar, mononymous superstar Michael (Louis Koo) flees to a secluded mountain resort hoping to escape inside a bottle. But Sue (Sammi Cheng) puts him to work as a replacement for her missing husband who disappeared in the nearby woods seven years earlier. Their meet-cute relationship continues along predictable lines, even after Michael discovers she’s a founding member of his fan club. But the ghost of her husband – and his celebrity obligations - keep their love affair from truly blossomi...

Even in 1997, cinematic serial killers were a dime a dozen. And while the influence of S ilence of the Lambs looms large over director Scott Reynold’s The Ugly - introducing another caged psychotic whose methods and motivation are put under the microscope by an ambitious psychiatrist - the film makes a concerted effort to put a new twist on the story using clever camera tricks and a dislocated narrative that bends reality…and expectations. Staging her interview in a stylized asylum, Dr. Karen Schumaker (Rebecca Hobbs) hopes to get something out of killer Simon Cartwright (Paolo Rotondo) that his own doctor hasn’t managed to do in six years. Simon’s abusive childhood and learning disability seem like obvious red flags, but his scarred self-image and mysterious voices pile one causality atop another. And after Karen starts seeing her patient popping up in her weakened subconscious, there doesn’t seem to be anyeasy explanation for his madness. Full of consciously inventive camerawor...

Blessed be the tastemakers! All due respect to those leaning on Letterboxd, but it’s boutique physical media companies like Visual Vengeance that are really introducing fans to films they might have otherwise overlooked. And in the case of their latest trio of titles, films even their creators never expected to debut in such extravagant special editions. Tapping into that specific strain of low-budget ambition, Saurians (1994) has the kind of earnestness that’s too hard to fake. Filmmaker Mark Polonia shoots for Jurassic Park -level action using a blend of stop motion, hand puppets and oversize models...all on Super 8. But it’s the awkward dubbing, sleepy acting and hammy dialogue that will be most appealing to fans of homemade cinema. Saurians is cringey in the best possible way, but Polonia stays fully committed to the idea he’s making something special. And, in that respect, he succeeds. Colony Mutation (1988) lifts its inspiration from the work of David Cronenberg, whos...

Fans of ’50 and ‘60s sci-fi monster movies are a dying breed. In the CGI age, does anyone have patience for rubber suits, cosmic rays and scenes filmed in rented trailers passing themselves off as mission control? I’m willing to bet there are a few of us left tracking down unseen gems like The Crawling Hand and The Slime People now out on a remastered Blu-ray double-feature courtesy of VCI Entertainment. It looks like a bargain bin special, but the 4K scans from the original negative say otherwise. In The Crawling Hand (1963), the severed arm of an infected astronaut washes up on a California beach where the microorganisms inside infect an ambitious college student. Meanwhile, the hand itself skitters away from a pair of scientists and the local sheriff (Alan “Skipper” Hale, Jr.) as they attempt to solve a string of mysterious strangulations. Well, duh! Taking a fairly serious approach to the low-budget material, director Herbert L. Strock was no stranger to the teenage horror m...

The catchphrase for ‘70s cinema was ambiguity . Not that David Lynch nonsense that leaves every scene open to interpretation, but the sort of morally murky, post-Watergate cynicism where the answers matter less than the questions they leave behind. Cutter’s Way was actually released in 1981, but it’s soaked in the neo-noir of Chinatown , the bleach-blond decay of Shampoo and the lazy disillusionment of Five Easy Pieces . So much so that when director Ivan Passer wrings it out to dry, the movie leaves its audience just as spiritually empty. Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a layabout lothario who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. After witnessing a murder, he casually identifies the suspect as one of the Santa Barbara elite, a man above reproach and, perhaps, above the law. Bone is happy to leave well enough alone, but his friend, Alex Cutter (John Heard), a disfigured and disillusioned Vietnam vet, sees an opportunity to dispense justice and make some money at th...

Director Damiano Damiani has built a career on corruption. Not the obvious, everyday swindlers, but the insidious variety that seeps into government institutions and can’t be removed without killing the host. In 1971’s Confessions of a Police Captain, he reunites with Franco Nero and Martin Balsam in a dissection of the Italian justice system, staging a chess match in which the rules were fixed before the game began. Captain Bonavia (Balsam) is the experienced cop who understands there is more than one way to get your man. District Attorney Traini (Nero) is his naïve counterpart, shocked at the suggestion of city officials working with mafiosos to line both their pockets. They approach the same case from different angles as the pressure to take down a dirty land developer ruffles feathers in the underworld and the judicial bench. The chess match metaphor is particularly relevant to Bonavia and Traini’s relationship. In a rare leading role, Balsam excels as the jaded mentor who has...

Kurt Russell’s name doesn’t pop up when it comes to action heroes, yet his career is littered with iconic performance in the genre: Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Tango & Cash, Stargate, Breakdown and about a half dozen others on the fringes. But 1998’s Soldier might be his most on-the-nose attempt hang with Stallone and Schwarzenegger, a ‘80s throwback full of weaponry, explosions and enough macho posturing to embarrass a Greek god. Raised on warfare from birth, Sgt. Todd (Russell) and his corps of space soldiers are deemed “outdated” after a new program introduces genetically engineered commandos who can kick ass more cost effectively. Literally thrown out with the trash, Todd lands on a waste disposal planet populated with displaced colonists who find his demeanor at odds with their peaceful existence. But when more space baddies arrive to cause trouble, he’s the only things standing between them and complete destruction. Written by David Webb Peoples (...

We can all agree that, for the most part, spoilers are bad. But when you’re talking about experimental films that intentionally rearrange the narrative and visual DNA of cinema itself, it helps to have a cheat code. And that’s certainly the case with The Dancing Hawk (1977), an avant-garde Polish drama that follows the professional success and personal failings of one Michal Toporny, a rural farmhand seduced by the Soviet bureaucracy into a life of ruthless ambition. Director Grzegorz Krolikiewicz follows the narrative structure of Citizen Kane but takes wild creative swings that cleverly disguise the tribute to Welles’ classic. Born into a proud sort of poverty, Toporny (Franciszek Trzeciak) begrudgingly agrees to pursue an education in the city, leaving behind a wife and son in hope of securing a better future for them all. But as his career takes off, Toporny scrubs himself clean of all traces of his humble beginnings, remarrying into a better family and spurning the political req...

Yet another take on the “possessed limb” genre which includes legit classics like Mad Love (1935) and the absurd but underrated Body Parts (1991), the supernatural threat from The Eye (2002) is caused by a corneal transplant that allows the new recipient to see the recently deceased. Pulling more inspiration from The Sixth Sense than any of films previously mentioned, this Hong Kong-Singapore production follows the same playbook as other millennial Asian horror entries, but delivers a few shocks you won’t see coming. Blind since the age of two, Mun (Angelica Lee) has her vision surgically restored and immediately realizes there are unintended side-effects. Shadowy figures can be seen leading off patients in the hospital ward and disturbing strangers pop up that no one else can see. Enlisting the aid of a psychologist, the duo travel to Thailand to hunt down the original donor and unravel the psychic trauma left behind. Disjointed, scattered and swimming in editorial cliches of t...

While Kurosawa translated the clichés of the American Western quite successfully in a number of his samurai films, director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi lifts his inspiration wholesale from the Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone in a pair of films starring the iconic Meiko Kaji ( Female Prisoner Scorpion ) as a lone wolf cut from the same pancho. In Wandering Ginza Butterfly,  Nami (Meiko Kaji) d rifts into town with all the icy aloofness of Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name,” becoming enmeshed in a local prostitution/gambling ring with rival mobsters fighting for control. A dangerous outsider with a criminal past,  she plays both sides just long enough to decide who deserves what’s coming before delivering it with ruthless efficiency; first with a pool cue…then with a sword. She-Cat Gambler follows a similar formula but adds an element of revenge and the kung-fu stylings of Sonny Chiba ( Street Fighter ) whose bursts of intensity go down like a shot of 5 Hour Energy. Both films unfol...

Samurai films don’t behind and end with the work of Akira Kurosawa, although for decades one couldn’t be blamed for thinking so. The logistics were simple: not enough work from Japan was considered “export friendly” enough to crack the language barrier. So the view of samurai as infallible warriors whose code of honor could not be broken stuck around for quite a while. But the films of Eiichi Kudo are here to politely ruin that assumption. Working in the same sandbox as Kurosawa, Kudo’s trilogy – 13 Assassins (1963), The Great Killing (1964) and 11 Samurai (1967) – ditches the romanticism is favor of mud, blood and the shattering suspicion that the whole "code of honor" thing might be a bad joke played on the people expected to die for it. Based on the true events during the Edo era in which a masochist domain lord was assassinated to prevent him from taking power, 13 Assassins follows a band of weary warriors on what amounts to a suicide mission: take out Lord Matsud...

The ‘80s were a glorious time for fantasy films. After Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur proved that sword ‘n sorcery properties needn’t be confined to marathon D&D sessions in the basement, Hollywood proceeded to crank out one medieval mash-up after another. By the time Red Sonja (1985) came around, Dino De Laurentiis, Richard Fleischer and Arnold Schwarzenegger had already brought a second Robert E. Howard adventure to the big screen – the family friendly Conan the Destroyer . And while not a true sequel, Red Sonja offers a sense of continuity and the next best thing to a full-on cast reunion. Torn from her family and trained as a master swordsman, Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) waits patiently to exact revenge on Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) and her army of ruthless conquerors. As fate would have it, Gedren comes into possession of a powerful relic that will destroy the world in less than a week. Aided by a displaced prince (Ernie Reyes, Jr), his faithful servant (Paul Smit...

While the floodgates finally opened for classic Japanese cinema not that long ago, contemporary filmmakers don’t seem to have the same cache among collectors. But perhaps 88 Films’ release of Sakuran (2007) and Helter Skelter (2012), both from acclaimed photographer and advertising veteran Mika Ninagawa, will inspire a bit more curiosity. Set in different centuries but dealing with the same pitfalls of beauty and fame, Ninagawa does more than make pretty pictures; she pulls the directorial strings with uncommon skill and righteous neo-feminist fury. In Sakuran , that fury simmers beneath layers of silk and spectacle. Kiyhoha (Anna Tsuchiya) is a courtesan in the famous Edo-era red light district who refuses to be molded into something more manageable, raging against the machine that’s trapped her like a goldfish in a jar. Mixing in contemporary music and a punk rock attitude (think Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette ), the result is less a traditional period drama and more a senso...

The third feature film from director low-budget Texas auteur Bret McCormick, Highway to Hell (1990) is a ride-or-die for fans of regional action epics. Mass murderer Toby Gilmore (Benton Jennings) escapes from prison to continue his random killing spree, grabbing a pretty hostage (Blue Thompson) along the way, dodging pursuit from a cop (Richard Harrison) with a personal grudge. Like most of McCormick’s films, this one lives and dies on enthusiasm rather than resources. And lead actor Benton Jennings has the former in spades! In a performance that veers from chaotic to hilarious, his turn as the gun crazy Gilmore is equal parts Nicolas Cage, Rutger Hauer and Yosemite Sam, throwing a temper tantrum at every inanimate object in sight. He’s like the overly committed lead singer of a punk band, spitting, swearing and sweating through every scene at full volume. And dragging the entire movie along with him. Highway to Hell adds a few production upgrades that make it seem more profess...

Movie gangsters come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and temperaments. There’s enough variety to apply a variation on the open-ended quote from Civil War , “But kind of gangster are you!” I mean, there’s Scorsese gangsters, Guy Ritchie gangsters, Suzuki gangsters even Tarantino gangsters. And while Takashi Miike gangsters probably don’t crack the top ten, they are most decidedly a breed of their own. 2001’s Agitator finds the director’s technique evolving alongside with his yakuza counterparts in a decidedly mature, and, compared to his V-Cinema creations, retrogressively conservative take on Japanese mafiosos. Yoichi (Naoto Takenaka) and Kunihiko (Masaya Kato) are sworn brothers in the Higuchi Gang under the banner of the Yokomizo family. But their loyalties are tested when a pair of high-ranking assassinations sets rival gangs against one-another in a secret plot to wrest control from within and without. Appalled by their leaders’ lack of loyalty – not to mention backbone – Yoic...

Even a creative genius isn’t born in a vacuum. While Sam Raimi’s visual razzle-dazzle in The   Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2  were wildly entertaining, any self-respecting fan of Asian cinema could see the influences written on the cabin walls. That’s not an insult. In fact, it’s an opportunity for fans to branch out into the Hong Kong horror-fantasy genre for more of the same. Take 1987’s Picture of a Nymph , itself a retread of A Chinese Ghost Story , which pits a pair of demon hunters against the only supernatural force they weren’t prepared for: true love. The adopted son of a Taoist monk, Shih Erh, (played by Yuen Biao) strikes up a friendship with a desperate scholar (Lawrence Ng) who falls in love with a wandering ghost (Joey Wang) kidnapped on her wedding day by a local spirit. Unsympathetic to their doomed love affair, Shih’s master wants to send them all back to the hell they came from. But his student takes a stand to prove that love can still survive beyond the ...

Martial arts movie fans are a pretty forgiving bunch…probably second only to horror fans. The structure and predictability both genres are part of their charm. So audiences are often willing to praise second-rate material simply because there’s so darn much of it. Which makes it all the more shocking when a movie comes along that really brings its “A” game. Fifteen minutes into 1990’s She Shoots Straight and you realize this is what all those movies were trying to achieve in the first place! When Mina (Joyce Godenzi) marries into the Huang family, she butts heads with her husband’s four sisters, particularly Chia Ling (Carina Lau), who’s jealous of her new sister-in-law’s reputation in the police force. But a tragedy brings them together in pursuit of a vicious gang of Vietnamese thieves intent on covering the tracks of their most recent crime. That means taking out members of the Huang family one by one. Produced by Sammo Hung’s Bo Ho Film Company and utilizing his top-notch...

Your chances of dying from a 20-foot-tall ninja made up of 30 ninjas standing on top of each other are low, but as 1983’s Duel to the Death proves, not totally impossible. The directorial debut of action choreographer Tony Ching is a riotously inventive hodge-podge of wuxia, kung-fu, chanbara and the aforementioned army of mystical ninja warriors that never stops trying to top itself. Two warriors are chosen to compete in a once-a-decade contest that will determine the superiority of Chinese or Japanese martial arts. But subterfuge on both sides results in a series of assassination attempts that bring the combatants together to defend their mutual sense of honor and fair play. Meanwhile, the daughter of their host wages her own campaign to fulfill her clans’ destiny and break into this elitest boys’ club. Duel to the Deat h manages to be both ridiculous and thoughtful at the same time, offering up a respectful view of Japanese culture and combat that was all too rare in Hong Kon...

It took a long time for Bruce Lee to get “discovered” in the U.S. By the time Enter the Dragon turned him into a phenomenon, he was already gone, leaving behind opportunistic producers eager to wring out his legacy and a handful of celebrity students to carry on his techniques. Chuck Norris might be the most famous of the bunch, but Joe Lewis was arguably the most formidable. A karate champion and early evangelist of American kickboxing, Lewis clearly had his eye on replicating his mentor’s big screen success. Instead, his debut, Jaguar Lives! (1979) found more fame years later on MST3K than it did in theaters. It’s follow-up, Force: Five (1981) is still a clumsy martial-arts mishmash stitched together from TV-grade stunt work and flat performances…but it’s aged to the point where an audiences can laugh with it rather than at it. Recruited to rescue a senator’s daughter from a drug-smuggling cult leader, Jim Martin (Lewis) gathers his own team of superfriends (including karat...

When it comes to films that reveal the inner workings of mafia crime families, The Godfather (1972) was far from the first of its kind. As far back as New York Confidential (1955), screenwriters were laying the groundwork for power-hungry dons, resentful daughters, stoic hitmen and crooked politicians. So the Japanese Godfather Trilogy  (1977 – 1978) isn’t exactly breaking new ground, merely shifting the setting to a new locale and reinforcing the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. As head of the Nakajima group, Sakura (Shin Saburi) understands a brutal truth of the modern era: a business that isn’t growing is already dying. So he pushes his second in command, Tatsumi (Koji Tsuruta) to expand the yakuza empire into legitimate territory, crossing paths with political figures who all want a piece of the pie…but whose morals are even lower than the criminals they publicly condemn. In part two, Ambition , Matsugae (Hiroki Matsukata) carries on with the campaign, ope...

Actors are a bit…self-involved. That’s not exactly breaking news. So for a particular breed of thespian, playing opposite themselves is probably quite a kick. Which might explain why Jean-Claude Van Damme has arranged that very scenario three times in three different movies: Double Impact (1991), Maximum Risk (1996) and Replicant (2001). In retrospect, probably not the best idea for an actor who needs all the help he can get to emote convincingly. But it can still be awful fun to watch, especially his inaugural adventure as Chad and Alex, twins separated at birth who reunite to save their father’s legacy in the aforementioned Double Impact . Raised in L.A., Chad is a happy-go-lucky womanizer who discovers his parents were murdered by a triad in Hong Kong where his twin, Alex, has been slumming for the past 20-plus years. This odd couple is brought together by Frank (Geoffrey Lewis), the former family bodyguard, in search of hard evidence to implicate the murderers responsi...

If your knowledge of Greek history is limited to Ray Harryhausen films and some half-remembered high school Honors English, then Michael Cacoyannis’ Iphigenia (1977), based on the play by Euripides, might seem above your pay grade. But there’s a reason these mythological tales have such staying power; they’re often built around universal truths, political drama and emotional baggage that’s all too familiar even in the modern era. Minus the stop motion monsters, of course. Despite its resemblance to Clash of the Titans , there are no krakens unleashed in this story of King Agamemnon, ruler of Argos, who’s duped into sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia, in order to appease the gods and raise the winds that will send his ships to Troy. Iphigenia’s mother, Queen Clytemnestra, rages for her doomed daughter’s plight, enlisting the help of Achilles to convince his fellow soldiers of the tragedy in the making. But in a world of weak, petty men beholden to their positions of power, women –...

Just as science-fiction cinema was never the same after 2001: A Space Odyssey , modern fantasy films owe a huge creative debt to John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981). Gritty and glorious, this retelling of the Arthur and the knights of the round table was a far cry from the stagey antics of Camelot or even the fantastic mythological adventures crafted by Ray Harryhausen. This felt real! A muddy, bloody medieval slog through the dark ages with a dose of authentic magic for good measure. Orphaned at birth and raised in anonymity, Arthur (Nigel Terry) pulls the sword from the stone and reveals himself as the once and future king…albeit a horribly unprepared one. That’s where Merlin (Nicol Williamson) comes in, schooling the young squire in the ways of proper politics to unite the land. But a bitter love triangle develops between his wife, Guinevere, and most trusted knight, Lancelot, opening the door for an incestual coup d’etat fueled by black magic and family drama. Starring a who’s ...