The Lost Empire

Title: The Lost Empire

Director: Jim Wynorski

Released: 1983

Starring: Melanie Vincz, Raven De La Croix, Angela Aames, Angus Scrimm, Paul Coufos, Robert Tessier, Angelique Pettyjohn

Plot: When Police officer Angel’s (Vincz) brother is killed trying to stop a trio of ninja’s robbing a jewellery story, her investigation soon leads her to the mysterious Dr. Sin Do who is holding a martial arts tournament on his secret island fortress. Now joined by the native American White Star (De La Croix) and Prison brawer Heather (Aames) they head to the tournament with the aim of avenging Angel’s brother.

Review: Please allow me to start by saying that his film really is a true shameless guilty pleasure, was well as that this is actually my first experience with the work of director Wynorski who like Albert Pyun unquestionably has his fans and who over the course of the last 25 years has churned out over 150 films to date including possibly his most well-known film “Chopping Mall”. Despite this legacy this film has until now always remained one of his most elusive even to the director himself, who began working with producer Bill Dever in 2007 to track it down and re-acquire the rights, which has now lead to it finally getting its release on DVD.

Almost certain that this film could be both his first and last, Wynorski crammed into this film everything he loved, which it would seem included feisty attractive ladies, ninja’s, martial arts and questionable gorilla suits to all but skim the surface of the sheer random fun this film is. It would only be fate that despite being originally made as a tax loss for Plitt Theatres owner Henry Plitt (something Wynorski reportedly didn’t know at the time) the film would be so liked by Plitt that he gave the film a theatrical release.

Essentially a sexed up version of “Enter the Dragon” the seemingly also fancies itself as a female James Bond spoof seeing how it opens with the familiar Bond peephole which this time draws focus on a pair of large breasts. It should be noted that this is essentially a hint of what is to come as like the films of David Sedaris and Russ Meyer, Wynorski is unashamedly also a fan of cramming as many beautiful women as he can into his films and generally finding provocative situation in which to film them something which continues with his work to date. 

Still despite this it would be wrong to dismiss this film as gratuitous T&A as there is atleast some attempt made at plotting, even if most of it is completely over the top, with the last half hour of this film being especially insane to the point were I was left questioning if they shot those scenes first or if Wynorski had just thrown caution completely to the wind knowing how random the rest of the film was already.

When it comes to the trio they are more a caricatures than with any form of realism as only highlighted by each of their introductions, hence Angel busting up a hostage situation at a school by riding a motorcycle down the hallway and punching out a random bad guy, while Heather is introduced by a prison yard brawl against a bull whip welding butch looking female dominatrix called whiplash, which essentially an excuse to include mud wrestling in the film. The weakest of the three though is White Star who just shows up on horse and spouts a bunch of Tonto-esq lines which I guess is kind of fitting seeing how Wynorski uses her character like a sexy version of Tonto.

It should also be worth noting that while the setup might be as a martial arts movie, there is actually very little martial arts action to be found here outside of the occasional kick or karate chop. This is especially amusing when it comes to the tournament were the competitors are told to expect a series of gratuitous challenges which will test their skills, only for the next scene to show the girls running around the grounds and through cones alongside shots of the girls being star jumps and pretty much anything else involving jumping to make the most of their general lack of clothing.  As such the whole competition plotline is quickly put on the backburner pretty much as soon as it starts, with only one fight actually taking place and that’s between Angel and one of Sin Do’s generic henchmen.

To balance things out from all the slap and tickle antics of the girls we do get a half-baked romance angle between Angel and Rick (Coufos) who with his classy porn star moustache is generally used for comedic value as he spends most of the film hamming things up which always seems to be the tradition for the romantic interest in these kind of girl gang movies. On the flip side he does also help balance out the amount of scantily clad ladies featured and pleases those of you who want to see shirtless Coufos.

While I might not be aware of Wynorski’s work before watching this film, I’m now keen to see what else is hiding in his back catalogue of work as this film really was a blast from the start. Ultimately though this film is  mindless fun and the sort of guilty pleasure to sit alongside the likes of “Faster Pussycat Kill Kill” and “Return to Savage Beach” and with the self-acknowledging cheese factor that most modern b-movies seem to aim for as seen especially with the recent direct to sci-fi channel releases from the likes of “The Asylum” and after all what other film can boast a phallus shaped laser cannon?

Godzilla (1998)

Title: Godzilla

Director: Robert Emmerich
Released: 1998
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, Harry Shearer, Arabella Field, Vicki Lewis, Doug Savant, Malcolm Danare, Lorry Goldman

Plot: In the wake of French atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific, decades later a Japanese fishing vessel is attacked by a mysterious creature. Now the creature is heading towards New York and it is up to NRC scientist Nick Tatopoulous (Broderick) and his team to stop the creature before it takes a bite out of the big apple.

Review: Since its original release this ill-advised remake has frequently been used as the yardstick of bad movies, with its original release being greeted with cries of disappointment by both establish Godzilla fans aswell as the general movie going public, while the critics of course were more than happy to cut the film down and mark it out as a monster sized flop.

So now with the new Godzilla movie mere months away I felt it was time to revisit this last attempt to adapt the legendry franchise and question if it really as bad a film as everyone seems to remember it as, with some fans refusing to even acknowledge it as being part of the franchise even though this Godzilla (or Zilla as he has become known) making a cheeky appearance in “Godzilla Final Wars”. Personally I have it on the same shelf as my Toho originals. Okay true it’s filed after those films, but it’s not like I have it stored in a brown bag or anything.

I guess from the start when you’re setting out to remake such a legendry franchise let alone the greatest movie of all time, you are essentially set to fail from the start, especially when you also have a rabid fanbase to appease while still finding a way to make it accessible to those not familiar with the original Toho movies. It is also equally questionable to hire a director who openly admitted to having no love for the original movies and only agreed to direct the film to ensure he could choose his next project. Meanwhile rumours floated around about Godzilla facing off against another monster in the lead up to the release, but with Emmerich clearly wanting to make the film within the boundaries of the sort of film he wanted to make, went for a monster on the loose storyline instead, while also ensuring that he was unable to unleash destruction and chaos on the screen somthing which has frequently been his film making mantra it would seem, especially with his previous summer blockbuster “Independence Day” being sold on such principles let alone its legendry trailer which simply showed the White House being blown up, while for Godzilla he just had him stomp on a t-rex skeleton.  

The other curious production choice is the casting of Matthew Broderick in the lead role, especially as here he plays more of a bumbling sidekick rather than fearless leader you would expect for such a role. As a result most of the film see’s Nick being the brunt of the jokes, over his unpronounceable surname or generally being referred to as “The Worm Guy” on the basis of his work researching the effects of radiation on the local worm population at Chernobyl, which of course clearly makes him the first choice when dealing with a giant radioactive lizard.

Thankfully the gung-ho hero quota is filled by Jean Reno’s Philippe and his team of DGSE (French foreign intelligence agency) agents who reveal their true purpose in the second half of the film, after the American forces have spent the best part of the first film generally causing more damage to the city than Godzilla, something which could be taken as a knowing nod to the original films where the armed forces would also inevitably cause more damage than the monsters attacking Tokyo that week. Sadly these same agents are regularly reduced to stereotypes, as they question the lack of pastries and decent coffee, let alone the fact that they perceive chewing gum and acting like Elvis to be a convincing way to disguise themselves as American soldiers. Still despite such xenophobic jabs Jean Reno is as watchable as always and makes the most of his role here as a man of action and no doubt largely responsible for the success of Nick’s mission here, considering how he frequently seems to be taking charge of the situation and rescuing Nick.

Such bizarre scripting and casting choices frequently seems to be the main issue here, while possibly the really surreal moment come from the pot shots at critics Emmerich takes throughout the film with the key one of course the candy loving and thumb raising Mayor Ebert (the always great Michael Lerner) and his aide Gene (Goldman), while a more obscure dig is the extra cast as a look-alike for “G-Fan Magazine” editor J.D. Lees who had made negative comments over leaked information from the films production. M. Night Shyamalan would also try and take a similar jab at the critics with “Lady In The Water” only to come off more smug than anything, especially when he made the least likeable character in the film a film critic. Roger Ebert of course being the constant professional simply responded to this homage of sorts in his review by proclaiming

“They let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla”

Still the real draw of course is Godzilla, or should that be Zilla as he’s become more popularly known amongst the G-Fans and if Emmerich does anything right it is with giving us atleast an impressive looking monster. True he may be more energetic than his Toho counterpart better known for his stomping style than the leaping and charging pace which Zilla favours, but then outside of the passing resemblance to each other, they are very different monsters which again may have been the source of much disappointment for the established fans expecting to see more of the Godzilla that they had become accustomed to than this version who comes with his own skills and seemingly none of those processed by his Toho counterpart. So while the Toho Godzilla breathed radioactive fire and enjoyed reducing Tokyo to rubble, Zilla is able to burrow underground, disappear at will aswell as being create some form of fiery breath which is never truly explained or shown clear enough (let alone frequently enough) to understand how it works. On the plus side the design and effects work while forgoing the traditional man in a suit in favour of CGI still look great even now, while giving Emmerich more flexibility with the destruction he chooses to unleash on New York (or “The City That Never Sleeps” as it is known here).

Emmerich despite not having love for the project still manages to craft some exciting scenes of monster rampage action including an exciting gunship pursuit. Elsewhere the scenes of destructions are equally well handled from the moment the incoming Zilla obliterates a pier. The real surprise here though after all the peak a boo teasing that Emmerich put into the promotion for the film, is the unexpected third quarter which sees him unleashing a horde of mini zilla’s on the screen which thankfully are nothing like the Toho Godzilla’s son Manila, though the slap stick moments which follow the group trying to escape these babies did end up grating on most audiences, but personally I found them to pretty fun, thanks largely to the comedic timing of Broderick, especially when the lift doors open to reveal a horde of Zilla babies destroying a popcorn stand, he manages to do more with a simple facial expression than a clumsy one liner as other actors might be included to do in such a scene. True it could be perceived as a sign that Emmerich couldn’t find a way to keep the audience interest with Godzilla on the rampage, especially when he somehow manages to find a way of hiding him every fifteen minutes, thanks to his new burrowing ability (let alone his unintentional size changes) which I thought was something limited to Baragon only. However it is hard to deny that the initial discover of the nest is not a great scene and one clearly taking its cues from the nest scenes in both “Alien” and “Aliens”, but like the memorable scenes in those films it seems to be pay (if perhaps unintentionally) homage to and its scenes like this and the end chase scene in the seemingly indestructible taxi cab, which seem to get frequently forgotten when people talk about the film.

So yes this film might not have been the Godzilla movie us G-fans wanted, but at the same time it is far from the worst film in the franchise (a toss up between "Godzilla's Revenge" or "Godzilla Vs. Megalon") or even the worst film ever made (The Zombie Diaries, Deaden, anything associated with Noel Clarke all come to mind) as most folks tend to view it, while certainly Emmerich would go on to make worse and even more overblown films like “2012”. Even with its flaws when ever Zilla or the mini-zilla’s are on the screen it is generally a lot of fun, which I guess is were it counts and if you get past the human distractions you might even realise that its not really that bad…..failing that take heart in the fact that you only have a few months till the new film is realised.

Domino

Title: Domino

Director: Tony Scott
Released: 2005
Staring: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Riz Abbasi, Delroy Lindo, Mo’Nique, Dabney Coleman, Lucy Liu, Macy Gray, Jacqueline Bisset, Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari, Brian Austin Green, Ian Ziering, Tom Waits, Jerry Springer

Plot: The fictional biography of Domino Harvey (Knightley), the model turned bounty hunter.

Review: Opening with the title card “This based on a true story….Sort of” it essentially sets the tone for the events which follow as Director Tony Scott brings his usual brand of subtlety (that being one of a house brick to the face) with his this original to say the least Biopic, the idea for which coming after Scott’s business manager sent him an article from “The Mail On Sunday” titled “My Gun For Hire: Why A Movie Star’s Rebel Daughter Turned Into A Bounty Hunter” about Domino Harvey which inspired him to immediately track her down and propose the idea of making a film about her life.

Even though interviews were conducted with Domino and her fellow bounty hunters Ed Marinez (Rourke) and Choco (Ramirez), Scott would reject the first two drafts of the screenplay based on these interviews, due to their conventional nature before finally asking “Donnie Darko” director and scribe Richard Kelly to write the screenplay after he read Kelly’s script for the much underappreciated “Southland Tales” which seemingly would also be the basis for this films screenplay aswell it would seem, especially considering that both films have such a keen interest in pop culture as well as a love of mind twisting plotting which is something this film also has in spades once it gets into the meat of its actual story.

Seeing how Domino Harvey is supposed to be a badass, especially from her confessions of graduating to fighting boys and one that the film would have you believe and a mythos which is essentially diluted by the real life Choco who appears on the special features of the DVD (looking absolutely nothing like the rugged Ramirez’s reimagining of his character) essentially confessing that most of the hunts they carried out involved Domino flirting with the bail jumper usually in a bar and convincing them to follow her outside were he would arrest them. Still you have thought that Scott would have cast a suitably badass female to play her, which sadly does not happen here as we instead get the laughably horrible tough girl act of Knightley who is hideous at the best of times, but here she reaches a new low and kind of laughable level of toughness usually peddled by Noel Clarke in the likes of “Kidulthood” as she smokes, curses and scowls her way through the film. The problem is not so much with the look as she makes a suitable clotheshorse for Domino’s many looks which sways between grunge and punk, with Knightley even rocking a mullet at one point with a suitably white trash look. The problem however comes when she opens her mouth and attempts to snarl out any kind of tough girl dialogue which makes it hard not to snigger, even more so when she makes zero effort to use any kind of accent other than her usual posh tones, which work perfectly fine in Knightley’s usual territory of costume drama and while Domino might have come from upper class roots even she didn’t speak this prim and proper as further highlighted in the interview footage also included on the disc.

So with Scott having kind of screwed up with the casting of his lead, he atleast makes up with it in his supporting cast, who essentially carry the film for Knightly from Rourke’s world weary Ed, who in many ways provides Domino with her missing father figure, while in many ways playing the same for Ramirez’s rough and ready Latin badass Choco. Meanwhile Lucy Liu is on her usual great form as the criminal psychologist, whose interview essentially structures the film as we follow Domino from her early life and the events which lead to her bounty hunting career in the lead up to the fictional armoured truck heist which she finds herself currently being investigated for involvement in. Still despite this heist being thrown into the mix, 95 percent of this film could essentially be seen as being fictional so anyone looking for some kind of serious biopic of her life, might be best not bothering with film, but did you really expect Scott to really make a serious picture to begin with?

Throughout the course of the film, these supporting characters becoming increasingly colourful as we meet Domino’s boss Claremont Williams III (Lindo) and his gaggle of feisty ladies who supply him with information via their positions at the DMV, while being lead by Caremont’s mistress (and world’s youngest Grandmother) Lateesha (Mo’Nique). Of course the Taj Mahal of these characters is Walken’s appearance as TV Executive Mark Heiss who signs the group up for his latest reality TV show project and probably best described in his assistant Kimmie’s speedy brief

“I should let you know that Mr Heiss will only be available to meet for about five minutes, so we should hurry up and cut to the point. Um, and speak in short sentences because he has the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth.”

Unquestionably this is Walken at his unchained best, as he blusters his way through his scenes, with Walken’s usual dialogue projection really only adding to his character here.

While the plot might descend into a slightly confusing mess, but Richard Kelly’s work has always been known for its head scratching quality as memorably seen with his debut “Donnie Darko, but here where he doesn’t have full control over its presentation it does result in the main heist plotline suffering from a twist to far. Meanwhile Scott pummels the viewer with pop culture shots and flashy visuals, while the continuously quick edits make it seem like Scott gave a kid hyperactivity and ADHD a soda and the keys to the editing suite which has at times the tendency to instil a feeling of nausea when viewing, especially in the rare moments he slows the film to crawl. Still when the film works it works well with some truly brutal moments of action, which has always been were Scott has excelled with the finale shootout at the stratosphere in Las Vegas making for a high pressure showdown between the FBI and the Mob, while random asides such as Lateesha pitching a new ethnic classification chart on Jerry Springer keep a surreal edge to things while making it highly reminiscent of “Natural Born Killers”.

True this film is far from perfect, but when Knightly isn’t speaking the film does have its share of truly memorable moments, with a heavy vein of black humour keeping things from getting too serious and for myself at least making it the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

Mortal Kombat

Title: Mortal Kombat
Director: Paul Anderson
Released: 1995
Staring: Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert, Talisa Soto, Trevor Goddard, Chris Casamassa,

Plot: Once every generation, there is an interdimensional martial arts tournament held, known simply as Mortal Kombat and designed to limit invasions between the realms. Having won the last nine tournaments, the realm of Outworld and now only need to win one more tournament to allow it’s Emperor Shao Kahn to invade and conquer Earth Realm. Now Shaolin warrior Liu Kang (Shou) seeking revenge against the tournament host Shang Tsung (Tagawa) for the death of his brother, joins the other fighters picked by Raiden (Lambert) The God of Thunder to face against Shao Kahn and the warriors of Outworld in a last bid attempt to save Earth.






Review: Regular readers of the blog will probably know already of my love for the “Mortal Kombat” series and it seemed about time that I actually reviewed the film I consider to be my ultimate guilty pleasure.

Video Game adaptations have in the past (with usually good reason) been frequently greeted with much critical distain and despite Uwe Boll having spent the majority of his career making a vast number of the horrible adaptations there have been to date, which only makes this all the more special let alone the fact that it broke the chain of bad video game adaptations when it was released after the legendry flops “Super Mario Bros.” (1993) and “Street Fighter” (1994) the later of which Jean Claude Van Damme ironically choose to do instead of this film, which unlike those two is awesome! Were this film succeeds were the others failed, is by Director Anderson taking the key ideas from the game and giving them his own twist in almost the same way that was attempted with “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” only Anderson is instead applying those same ideas to a traditional Kung Fu format, while keeping the more fantastical elements to a minimum while still finding a way to make such trademark elements such as the fantastical fighting styles of the outworld fighters like Scorpion and Sub Zero

The other strength here is by limiting the characters to those from the first game, while other video game tie in’s got bogged down with trying to work in everyone’s favourite characters, something especially memorable from the mess which “Street Fighter” became by trying to include every single character and while “Mortal Kombat” throws in several original creations such as Art Lean (Edwards), while the tournament setting allows for these characters to be introduced and serve their purpose before being handily disposed of. Infact the format perhaps works alittle too well seeing how after the first quarter when the Trio of Liu Kang, Movie star Johnny Cage (Ashby) and Sonya Blade (Wilson) arrive on the island, it is essentially fighting from that moment on with little or no break between each sequence, but this what we as fans want to see, rather than clumsy attempts to add depths to what are at their best, as much as we want to deny it are little more than paper thin caricatures, which is fine for the purpose they serve in the video game world and it’s because of this same reason that other attempts to adapt games frequently fail, as directors try to either stick too close to the source material or take it too far from this material so that it alienates even the most hardcore of the fanbase. Anderson would later take his skill of adaptation to the “Resident Evil” franchise eventually taking it in a completly new direction than the games, forming a franchise which currently shows no signs of slowing down, as seen by the success of the recent forth entry in the series “Resident Evil: Apocalypse”, despite the film not exactly bringing much to the Zombie genre they frequently emulate, other than a series of entry level zombie movies, before their fans move onto the more legendry films of George Romero and in way the same thing could be said for “Mortal Kombat” which is almost like an entry level movie for the Kung Fu genre, aswell as a thinly veiled adaptation of “Enter the Dragon” only with the added bonuses of multi armed mutants and soul stealing sorcerers.

The action scenes are all handled well with even the non martial art trained amongst the cast, such as Ashby and Wilson both coming across as convincing martial artists, with the majority of them being handled by Shou, who surprisingly would fall off the radar after this film, which only makes it more of a shame he wasn’t seen in similar roles, with his star pretty much dropping after this films release. All the fighters show off their trademark moves with some such as Scorpions spear and Johnny Cage’s package punch are all accounted for, while Goro is pretty much a perfect adaptation from his video game persona and only benefits further from being an animatronics creation, especially when you look at the seriously dated CGI used to create Reptile, which I remember being alot more impressive the first time I saw this film, but then the same could also be said for “The Lawnmower Man” (1992). Still unlike the CGI the techno heavy soundtrack still kicks ass, with the opening theme perfectly setting the tone for the fun which follows.

The big surprise here is the lack of gore, especially seeing how the Mortal Kombat series are some of the most violent fighting games ever made and while I wasn’t expecting to see Sub Zero performing his fatality of tearing off an opponents head and spinal cord, it is still a tricky game to adapt faithfully enough to stay in tune with what fans have come to expect from the series. Still it does manage to throw in a few surprises in this stake, much like the surprise appearance of the games memorable “Pit” stage and the gory demise of Reptile but its still all fun times even without the gory extremes of the game, but then Anderson it’s also worth remembering is the same director who gave us a gore free zombie movie (See: Resident Evil).

As much as other critics have blasted this flick in the past, frequently trying to lump it in with Street Fighter and while admittedly the humour can seem alitle forced in places and it’s sequel “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” is utter garbage, this still remains a great film. Even now as I try to look at it through a more critical viewpoint, rather than the rose tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia and it did also spawn “Mortal Kombat: Conquest” a great TV show which is still in need of a decent DVD release and while the intregring “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” has now sadly drifted away from its intriguing “Dark Knight” style reimagining into more familiar territory after being turned into "Mortal Kombat: Legacy", proving once more that studio exec’s really don’t know shit.