Movieline Online

Self-reflexivity in cinema is nothing new.  In fact, it’s at work in  every  piece of art whether the audience is consciously aware of it or not.   But the line between reality and our perceived version of ourselves has never been thinner thanks to social media and the digital revolution.  Takeshi Kushida’s  Woman of the Photographs approaches the dichotomy of this illusory state of being with an equally fuzzy lens, making a case for revealing our true selves while existing in a hyper-stylized artistic creation.   Quietly ensconced in his studio, a photographer ekes out a living by retouching glamour shots of women for prospective matchmaking websites.  But his chance meeting with an influencer changes their lives after untouched photographs of her accidental injuries create a big boost in followers.  Their relationship develops into a co-dependency in which both have an opportunity for escape from their self-cre...

Stop-motion animator Phil Tippett earned some belated buzz with the release of his long-gestating epic  Mad God  (2021) which premiered on Shudder last year.  The grotesque post-apocalyptic project might have been a hard sell  commercially , but as a piece of adult-oriented, almost experimental, sci-fi / horror it was unique in its field.  But maybe not as unique as you think… Takehide Hori’s  Junk Head  (2021), set in a very similar dystopian underground of monsters, mutants and the remnants of malformed mankind, is a more accessible take on the same material.  Expanded from a 2017 short, Hori lets his imagination run wild, but grounds the experience with manga-style fight scenes and a (semi) traditional narrative that makes his hero’s journey easier to follow…and easier to root for.   Dispatched into the underworld to uncover the secret of sexual reproduction, which Man has somehow lost, an unnamed heroic android falls into t...

Women seem to be alternately fascinated and horrified by the mysteries of male-bonding.  Perhaps because men themselves can’t be bothered.  We love, hate, embrace, envy, forgive and forget with the same self-centered, unselfconsciousness we were born with.  I can’t speak for all men, but I  can  predict that another one wouldn’t take the time to correct me.  And that’s the sneaky appeal of 1976’s French road movie  Le Plein de Super  ( Fill ‘er Up with Super ), an off-the-cuff comedy that captures the burgeoning friendship between four men who find solace in their temporary camaraderie.   Klouk and Philippe have just begun their cross-country journey to deliver a Chevy station wagon to its wealthy owner on the coast when they’re all-but hijacked by Charles and Daniel, hard-up and romantically-challenged roommates who come along for the ride.  What begins as a tense trip in close quarters evolves into an opportuni...

Martial arts films are far from a one-man (or woman) show.  In fact, it takes a small army of tightly choreographed stunt people to get all those kicks, punches, leaps and flips just right.  And, just like a romantic comedy, some chemistry is better than others.   Knockabout  (1979) pairs two of more famous graduates of the China Drama Academy -  Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao -  who, along with Jackie Chan, graduated from background actors to full-fledged stars under the Golden Harvest banner.    Two con artist brothers – Yipao (Yuen Biao) and Taipao (Bryan Leung) - fall under the tutelage of a mysterious kung fu master, Silver Fox, who agrees to pass on his skills.  Quickly excelling as students, their choice turns out to be a bad one as the master is a wanted criminal who turns on them to cover his tracks.  In a quest for revenge, Yipao takes on an eccentric new teacher, Fat Beggar (Sammo Hung), whose...

If you watch enough movies, you can tell within the first five minutes if you’re in the hands of someone who really knows what they’re doing.  There’s a personality behind the camera, storytelling with visual intention rather than just coverage.  Hitchcock is the most obvious example but he didn’t have a copyright on the technique.  Spanish writer/director Narciso Ibanez Serrador, after the success of his  Twilight Zone -inspired TV series  Tales to Keep you Awake , moved to the big screen for 1969’s  La Residencia , a gothic-giallo combo that pulls out all the stops, echoing the sexually-repressed films of Luis Bunel and predating the Italian wave of sexy thrillers.  As the new student in a tough-as-nails boarding school, Teresa (Cristina Galbo) has her work cut out just trying to survive the everyday cut throat female politics.  But there’s also a killer on the loose, luring away troubled girls and covering up their disappear...

In the 1970s Hollywood truly went global in its storytelling.  The demise of the studio system and its canned reality inspired filmmakers to work on a much larger scale, both narratively and budgetarily.  Hijackings, bombings and bloody coups abroad were finally being reflected on the big screen.  John Frankenheimer followed up his downer sequel to  The French Connection  with another international threat inspired by the tragic events during the Munich Olympics.   Black Sunday  (1977) poses the now all-too-plausible possibility of a terrorist attack at a major American entertainment venue – in this case, Super Bowl X.     In a weak moment, Israeli agent Kabakov (Robert Shaw) lets a female member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September slip through the cracks during a raid.  He comes to regret that decision when that she recruits an unstable Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) to pilot the Goodyear blimp on a...

Each and every Dario Argento film has its admirers.  Perhaps because no matter how illogical, flawed or flat-out inept some of his films may be, there's always a bright spot (or two...or three) that could have sprung from the visual imagination of no other director.   Phenomena  (1985), released as  Creepers  in the U.S., is his first cinematic foray into the truly absurd.  But for every head-scratching moment of this  Carrie -gone-giallo thriller there is one (or two...or three) instances of demented genius at work.   A killer is stalking the young girls of Switzerland, claiming his victims in an area known as the "Swiss Transylvania" and rarely leaving a complete body for investigators to gather clues.  Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of an absent movie star, arrives at the local boarding school and becomes an accidental witness to the next murder while sleepwalking.  She's led to safety by a...

The Oscars might amount to nothing more than  pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey , but sometimes cinematic justice does prevail.  This year, it’s Michelle Yeoh’s nomination for  Everything, Everywhere, All at Once , a performance that only she could have pulled off.  And what’s truly beautiful about this moment is that it gives new fans a chance to catch up on her extensive  Hong Kong career,  Films like  Magnificent Warriors  (1987) a whirlwind adventure story combining martial arts, swashbuckling adventure and lots and lots of ‘80s explosions.   Set during the second Sino-Japanese war, Fok Ming-ming (Yeoh) is a tough-as-nails pilot - who also happens to be handy with a whip - sent on a mission by the Chinese government to retrieve a double-agent from occupied territory.  Her partners include a fellow secret agent and a professional gambler caught up in the mess after a case of mistaken identity.  After their ...

While studies have shown that movies haven’t actually gotten  longer  over the past few decades, it’s still exciting to stumble across a short-ass movie…meaning anything  under  an hour and a half, including credits and the now-required amount of no less than ten company logos.  By that standard,  The Ghosts of Monday  – coming in at a brisk 78 minutes – is a rousing success.  Unfortunately, in every  other  respect it’s a tremendous waste of valuable fucking time.   Filming a pilot for a ghost-hunting program in an abandoned Cypress hotel, the crew revolts when they’re asked to stage “phony” supernatural occurrences for the camera.  But they don’t have to wait long before a series of  genuine  human sacrifices prove that the snake-god rumored to inhabit the premises is actually the real thing.   That synopsis probably ruins several plot points, but, quite honestly, making it through the first half...

Teen comedies of the ‘80s learned all the wrong lessons from  Fast Times at Ridgemont High .  Sure, they included the requisite amount of sex, drugs and rock and roll.  But most avoided any of the romantic consequences that made that movie particularly memorable.  Released in the same year,  The Last American Virgin  (1982) is one of the few that managed to walk a hormonal tightrope between toxic masculinity and first-love jitters.   Part of a trio of hot-to-trot teens, Gary (Lawrence Monoson) is the sensitive one of the group, poorly disguising his obsession with the new girl in school, Karen (Diane Franklin), who tragically falls for the charms of his best friend.  Forced to participate in one comic misadventure after another in pursuit of his first lay, Gary finally gets a chance to play the hero and take Karen under his wing.  But young love has a hard time living up to his expectations.   A remake of his 197...

Thank God for Keith David.   With 357 acting credits under his belt and a voice that can best be described as  biblical , he’s been single-handedly saving movies from mediocrity since his feature film premiere in John Carpenter’s  The Thing .  With a shaved head placed atop his imposing six-foot-two frame, intimidation comes easy.  But the actor balances those physical gifts with a  gap-toothed comedic charm that’s stretched out his career well past its expiration date.   Just watch his skills in  Men at Work  (1990), a forgettable comedy that hardly generates a laugh until Keith David is introduced as Louis, a Vietnam obsessed supervisor forced to babysit James and Carl (Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen), two waste disposal technicians who become embroiled in a conspiracy involving toxic waste, corporate corruption and a dead politician found in a garbage can.   Estevez’s follow-up to his corny but endearing dir...

Certain filmmakers reach a point in their career in which audience enjoyment of their work doesn’t even factor into the equation.   To quote Quentin Tarantino, directors like Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch have “disappeared so far up their own asses that I have no desire to see another movie from them until I hear something different.”  It’s a crude and obviously personal opinion, but it  does  call to attention a certain kind of auteur who makes movies for  themselves  rather than the paying public. But to some cinephiles, that can be an enjoyable challenge.  And late director Alain Robbe-Grillet has been throwing down the gauntlet since first his first work,  Last Year at Marienbad  (1961), was adapted by Alain Resnais.  Never one to stick to a traditional narrative format, Robbe-Grillet went even further off the rails when he starting making his own films, playfully toying with audiences by deconstructing not...

The modern superhero movie has plenty of cinematic progenitors, but hardly anyone ever mentions ‘90s Hong Kong martial arts films, despite the fact that 1993’s  The Heroic Trio  lays it out there right in the title.  Released the same year,  Tai Chi Master  - known as  Twin Dragons  abroad-  is an even more obvious blueprint for Marvel’s comic book kingdom to come, pitting two nearly invulnerable monks against one another for kung fu supremacy.   Kicked out of the monastery, Junbao (Jet Li) and Tienbo (Chin Siu Ho) pursue drastically different paths in life.  Kind-hearted and curious, Junbao teams up with a group of rebels out free themselves from a brutal military dictatorship.  Meanwhile, Tienbo goes over to the dark side, pledging himself as a warrior for the Governor and betraying his friends for power and ambition.   Directed with frantic imagination by Yuen Woo-ping (who was later recruited by the Wach...

Erotic cinema is having a bit of a moment.  Certainly not in theaters, where superhero and horror films seem as sexually neutered as ever.  But thanks to shows like  House of the Dragon, Bridgerton , and  Outlander , there’s more naughtiness onscreen right now than ever before.  So, it only makes sense that the  last  great era of small-screen sex is getting its time in the spotlight too.   The SkinMax line of DVDs celebrates everything good and bad about ‘90s erotic cinema, most of which showed up on late-night cable channels where performers like Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain and Shannon Whirry became icons in the softcore genre.  Before the onset of internet porn, these direct-to-video titles were a favorite guilty pleasure for anyone with a coaxial connection.   The five initial releases – each a double-feature – offer up textbook examples of what was expected from the genre, which mixed seedy suspense with softcore...

The final feature film by Greek do-it-all indie filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, 2002’s  .com for Murder  is a fitting coda for his career.  Always chasing the next trend, Mastorakis stumbles upon a killer idea – Hitchcock reinvented for the digital age – and proceeds to make the wrong choices nearly every step along the way, starting with a cast seemingly chosen at random from a  Dancing with the Stars  punchbowl.     Nastassja Kinski stars as a wheelchair bound internet voyeur who pisses off the wrong porn-obsessed hacker. Soon she and her sister (Nicollette Sheridan) are trapped in their Hollywood Hills smart home, part of a murderous live-stream with their deaths planned as the grand finale.  Their only hope for rescue comes in the form of Huey Lewis (I’m not kidding) as a friendly neighborhood FBI agent.  And did I mention the home is owned by Roger Daltry?   Mastorakis has been making movies his own way for a ver...

The late Bill Paxton was never afraid of outlandish genre projects.  The early ‘90s found him bouncing between tentpole feature films like  Predator 2 ,  Twister  and  True Lies  while slumming (so to speak) in bizarre indies such as  The Dark Backward  and  The Vagrant  (1992), the latter a quirky horror comedy produced by Mel Brooks and directed by special effects maestro Chris Walas, which effectively ended his career behind the camera.   Graham Krakowski (Paxton) is a low-level computer analyst who lives a safe, predictable existence.  But after purchasing a fixer-upper ranch house his life takes paranoid turn when a local vagrant (Marshall Bell) wreaks havoc on his heavily mortgaged home life.  Framed for multiple offenses and driven to the point of insanity, Graham narrowly escapes a jail sentence and  still  can’t convince anyone that the vagrant is anything more than a disfigured delusion. ...

Japan has a ridiculously rich cinematic history from which to pilfer.  But for  Maniac Driver  (2020), a film based around half-a-dozen genres and assorted pinkie violence tropes, director Kurando Mitsutake wasn’t content to stick to his home county.  In fact, the film is introduced as a Japanese  giallo , that particular brand of erotic thriller that Italy bled dry throughout the ‘70s.  Although Mitsutake seems to be under the impression that the only qualifications are technicolor lighting and a keyboard-driven music score. Cruising the streets of Tokyo for a woman worthy of his misplaced vengeance, the unnamed “driver” struggles to maintain a grip on the wheel  and  his sanity at the same time.  Visions of wild sex and brutal violence interrupt his self-destructive quest, which culminates in the accidental rescue of his intended victim.  Now labeled a hero, will his life its true meaning…or simply unveil yet a...

An  homage  is tough to pull off, especially when you announce your intentions up front.   Nightmare Symphony (2020) is not just a love letter to all things Lucio Fulci - the Italian director whose biggest success came during a particular gore drenched string of international hits during the ‘80s – but a  reboot  of one film in particular:   A Cat in the Brain  (aka  Nightmare Concert ) which took an autobiographical approach to tell a behind-the-scenes horror story of a director suffering a creative crisis. In  Nightmare Symphony , Frank LaLoggia (director of  Fear No Evil  and  Lady in White ) plays a fictionalized version of himself, just putting the finishing touches on his new film.  But his arrival in Italy is marred by the vicious murder of his female star, poor feedback from his collaborator and outrageous demands by his producer.  His only lifeline is Isabelle (Antonella Salvucci), editor ...

East meets West  certainly isn’t a new idea for the martial arts genre.  The structure of most kung fu films bump through the wagon ruts of classic western cliches and high noon showdowns anyway.  But  Millionaires’ Express  (1986) takes things a step further, creating a comedy mash-up of simultaneous stick-ups and hijackings all stuffed under writer / director Sammo Hung’s ridiculous 10-gallon hat.   Ching Fong-tin (Hung) is an outlaw with a heart of gold returning to his hometown with a plan to derail the Millionaires’ Express and funnel all the big spenders into his hometown.  But there are other agendas at work, including a bank hold up and international heist, all ignorantly competing with one another.  Toss in a group of ambitious hookers and an overeager local police force and the stage is set for a  Blazing Saddles  finale with some Shanghai style.   Next to Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung is probably the most li...

The 4 th  entry in a 10-chapter film saga from Toei,  Big Time Gambling Boss  (1968) shuffles the yakuza deck and deals out its story in a manner unique to the cluttered criminal underworld genre.  There’s still some swordplay and stabbing, but director Kosaku Yamashita emphasizes  internal  conflicts with a surprisingly mature and restrained take on allegiance to the gangster code versus a strong moral compass.  Alternately glorifying and condemning the yakuza lifestyle, the film offers up a complicated character drama that earned high praise from writer / director Paul Schrader who called it an “art house rose blooming from exploitation roots.”  After the leader of the Tenryu clan suffers a debilitating stroke, a plot is hatched from within to push the clan into risky territory involving drugs and foreign contraband.  Senba (Nobuo Kaneko) stirs the pot by pitting several possible successors against one another, including Naka...

The horror genre took a dramatic turn after the success of  Rosemary's Baby  (1968).  Suddenly, castles, cobwebs and fangs were about as popular as three-day-old donuts.  Which meant that adaptations of reliable literary authors like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft needed a fast facelift before hitting theaters.  And that's exactly what AIP attempted with this  rather desperate psychedelic spin on  The Dunwich Horror  (1970). Director Daniel Haller had already taken a semi-successful crack at Lovecraft once with 1965's  Die Monster Die , so he probably seemed as good a choice as any to steer the story of yet another interdimensional incursion by the "Old Ones," this time invited into our world by one Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) who plans to supernaturally impregnate a naive college girl (Sandra Dee) with the help of the infamous Necronomicon.  After stealing a copy from Miskatonic University, Wilbur heads...