Batman Ninja

Watch Movies TV -***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! It's Batman's turn to be the white savior in Japan.

Batman Ninja – 2 out of 5

I’m not really an anime guy.  While I think the general designs and the art style of anime looks kinda cool I never really got into the world of Japanese anime.  Every time I say that I’m always told that I’m watching the “wrong anime” but whenever I take the suggestions of the person who makes this declaration I still find it not resonating with me.  So far, I just haven’t found a story in the world of anime that speaks to me and I find a lot of the clichés within them (the static image filled with action lines, the weird facial expressions, the strange stories and all the yelling) not really my cup of tea.  However, when a property I like gets the anime treatment I will definitely give it a shot and that’s what happened when Batman went anime in Batman Ninja.  Long story short:  This didn’t change my status on anime.  Also, I watched the American dubbed version so I did the dubs and not the subs.  I’m sure that will get me killed in some anime circles.

Pfff, dummy.  The movie is called Batman Ninja.

The hairstyle makes for a good argument that you
might be branding too much, Batman.

While battling Gorilla Grodd (Fred Tatascione), Batman (Roger Craig Smith) gets caught up in the villain’s device called the Quake Engine and it sends him back in time to Feudal Japan.  Batman soon learns he wasn’t the only one who made the trip as villains The Joker (Tony Hale) and Harley Quinn (Tara Strong) have become feudal lords and are now battling other enemies from Batman’s rogue gallery for control of the area.  Batman, however, isn’t alone as Alfred (Adam Croasdell), Catwoman (Grey Griffin), Robin (Yuri Lowenthal), Red Hood (Lowenthal again), Red Robin (Will Friedle) and Nightwing (Croasdell again) have also been displaced and they will team with a ninja clan that prophesizes of a bat ninja who will restore order to the land.

He's wondering if he put enough bats on his outfit.

I won’t lie and say I hated Batman Ninja.  There are definitely elements that I enjoyed about it.  For example, the character designs definitely looked cool and the animation styles used in the film are basically fine art.  Simply put, the film is gorgeous.  The film also has some really cool action sequences that used footage of real actors that were animated over so they not only look cool but they move extremely realistically.  Finally, the voice acting for the English cast was fairly decent.  Roger Craig Smith is a great Batman, Tara Strong is fantastic as Harley Quinn and I really enjoyed Tom Kenny as Penguin.  Sadly, that is kinda where my positives end because I found the rest of the project to be too odd for me to enjoy.

How many other people in Batman's life also got sucked into this?  Were any
of them peripheral actors in his life?  Like did a gas station attendant who once
helped Bruce Wayne suddenly wake up in ancient Japan?

I mentioned I like the designs of the characters and found the animation to be great but there were elements of it that I found distracting.  The biggest distraction is how the characters never stop moving.  Even when they are standing around talking there is always some movement going on with their body—and I don’t mean natural body language.  The movements all looked and felt very unnatural as their heads would shake side-to-side as they spoke or their bodies would be slightly twisting.  It’s hard to describe but all the characters had what appeared to be twitches or nervous energy and it looked very strange.

Additionally, the English-speaking cast, for the most part, is doing a great job—especially considering how strange some of the dialogue gets.  One member of the cast, however, I was on the fence on the entire time was Tony Hale as The Joker.  There are times where he is just fantastic as the clown but then there are times he feels out-of-place.  For the most part, it sounds like Buster Bluth doing a Joker impression and it is pretty distracting.

He looks great.  He must be on his way to Motherboy.

The product only gets stranger from there as the time jump somehow makes the World’s Greatest Detective a little thick as he is blind to the fact that Alfred, having fallen through time as well, is literally standing right next to him and it takes the vigilante a full minute to realize it—but that isn’t even the worst of it.  During its third act is when the story lost me with its craziness as we watch all the villains fight in buildings that turn into robots.  I’ll concede that the tech for that all came from the future when Grodd sent everyone back but once all the buildings combine to create a bigger robot the whole thing just became silly—and this is a story that centers on a grown man who dresses as a bat and fights crime.  Strangely enough, however, this isn’t even the weirdest part as the heroes use a large group of monkeys and bats and have them combine together to create a giant version of Batman to fight said building robot.  Is all anime this strange?  Is this an outlier or is it par for the course?

A bunch of buildings formed together as a giant robot versus a giant monkey
made out of millions of armored monkeys.  Can this be any stranger?

Oh wait, it can.  The giant monkey made out of millions of armored monkeys
was covered by millions of bats to form a giant Batman.  Kudos for the bats
who were able to change their shading and coloring.

From a technical standpoint, Batman Ninja is well made and looks great.  The only problem is that I am not the target audience for the feature.  The tale got a little too over-the-top for me (I was officially checked out once the Voltron-monkey sequence happened).  Add in the fact I’m not an anime fan (and yes, there is plenty of screaming in this one and tons of action lines surrounding still images) and this turned out to be a forgettable one for me.  I admire DC’s animated library taking this route and trying something so incredibly different since most of their animated films look and feel the same over and over again but, alas, this one just wasn’t for me.

Oh wait, it gets dumber.  When Batman gets back to his time, he decides to take
a horse-drawn Batmobile to an event for the mayor as Bruce Wayne.

Retro Review: Daylight (1996)

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Daylight
1996
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Jay O' Sanders, Karen Young
Genre: Disaster Action 
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $159 million 

Plot: A truck containing dangerous chemicals explodes in the Holland Tunnel, trapping those New Yorkers not killed in the explosion. It's up to an ex-city Emergency Medical Services director to save the survivors 

'Stallone-Led Flick Not Quite Exactly Right, But There Should Have Been More To It'

Daylight flopped back during its release in 1996 and by watching it today, though this is not the sheer disaster of a movie as it was panned by critics at the time, and released during a wave of similarly formulaic films of this type in Volcano, Deep Impact, Twister, Independence Day, it is still, in most respects, a relative disappointment and there are clearly issues with it that should have been ironed out. 

A New York tunnel collapses and with that, several residents are trapped inside. A disgraced Emergency Services Chief named Kit is chosen to come to their aid. Stuff blows up, water is gushing out, everything falls apart - which is all exciting, sort of; it's a bit of a shame that by taking away the action sequences and effects, there is not much else left to it that is entertaining, and running at almost 2 hrs, the story is so bloated and hardly fleshed out very well. 

Let's face it, if it wasn't for Sylvester Stallone, who tries to provide some quality and keep us invested in the film, Daylight would not see the light of day, - pardon the expression. There are some suspense and tension, some explosions and things blowing up, but the story doesn't supplement these elements well enough. There just wasn't more here that was surprising that came left-field that I duly wanted out of it. 

Vanessa Bell Calloway's fake Carribean/French accent was terrible, the supporting cast is not notable with some of their characters resorting to shouting their lines to emphasise their roles in the movie, Viggo Mortensen bites the dust earlier on, meaning Daylight doesn't have an actual villain for Stallone and co to contend with, as does Slyvester Stallone's real-life son, Sage in an all-too-brief cameo. But for Kit, the lead paper-thin characters do not lend themselves well to the cause, as it seems he is the only character afforded with some depth, and neither of them are empathetic or likeable enough, and thus lack any personality for us to root for them. Amy Brenneman's Madeline makes Cliffhanger's Janine Turner's Jessie look 10 times better; the onscreen partnership of Brenneman and Stallone feels hokier and lacks any real reverence their characters might have towards one another. It basically retreads the same tropes as Cliffhanger, the other Sly Stallone movie - only this is nowhere as great and, in addition, it is far less entertaining as well. 

Rob Cohen was attempting to make a disaster action flick that tries to be serious, whilst emphasising that people can triumph against the odds. He takes what is an engaging and exciting idea - only to turn it into a mundane and at times jarring affair that is also too limited in scope. As each of the squabbling characters meets their own grisly fate, it's done in a way that one doesn't have any emotional investment towards either of them and the plot never becomes involving enough. With that in mind, I didn't care and it feels mechanical. The effects themselves are explosive and the action set pieces range from passable to good, yet they are anything but sizzling. 

Much like Judge Dredd was inferior to Demolition Man, Daylight is inferior to Renny Harlin's Cliffhanger: the set-ups of these films, when paired opposite one another, are remarkably similar in many respects -, & though ultimately Daylight does do some things that Cliffhanger did too, by contrast, this is not as effective and resounding, and it isn't long until it ensuingly runs out of ideas. 

Final Verdict:

That's not to say this isn't entirely unwatchable, but it steers too much on the formulaic and melodramatic side that I became tired of the story and my eyes wandered away from the screen several times, whilst the underdeveloped secondary characters are literally upstaged and eclipsed by star man, Stallone and of whom they are written in a way that nobody will care what happens to them. 

It has its shortcomings for sure and it's not bad; nevertheless, Daylight is yet again another one of those action-based thrillers that, with a bit more work in most areas, the end product would have been a whole lot more engaging, exceptional and serviceable.


Overall:

Movie Review: The Last Black Man in San Francisco

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The Last Black Man in San Francisco **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Joe Talbot.

Written by: Joe Talbot and Rob Richert and Jimmie Fails.

Starring: Jimmie Fails (Jimmie Fails), Jonathan Majors (Montgomery Allen), Danny Glover (Grandpa Allen), Tichina Arnold (Wanda Fails), Rob Morgan (James Sr.), Mike Epps (Bobby), Finn Wittrock (Clayton), Thora Birch (Becca), Willie Hen (Preacher), Jamal Trulove (Kofi), Jordan Gomes (Stunna), Isiain Lalime (Gunna), Jeivon Parker (Fresh), Antoine Redus (Nitty).

 

I’m having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Last Black Man in San Francisco – Joe Talbot’s remarkable feature debut film, and one that has haunted me since seeing it last week. There is a dreamlike atmosphere that Talbot and company create – a kind of romantic haze that the film takes place in. The film really is a love story – on multiple levels – as it plays out. It is a tale of a young man, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) who is in love with his old family home – a home that his grandfather built with his own two hands in 1946, and was in the family for 50 years, before they lost it – when Jimmie was still a child. Still, it’s the only house he ever really felt at home in. It is a massive house, and it provided Jimmie everything he needed as a child – including ways to hide from his parents when they fought, which was often. After they lost the house, his spent time with his father – squatting in one place after another, sometimes living in a car, and some time in a group home. He never really knew where his mother was, although she’d show up from time to time. All these years later, even though the house is now owned by an older white couple (gentrification being a major theme in the film, as you can tell from the title) – Jimmie still returns to the house again and again and again – to help with the upkeep, much to the chagrin of the new owners. But when something happens – and the house is again vacant, although we know not for long – Jimmie and his best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors) move in. Jimmie is squatting once again.

 

So yes, the film is in many ways a love story about a man and a house. The house is, of course, indifferent to Jimmie’s affection – but that doesn’t make his affection any less real. But it’s also a love letter from the filmmakers to San Francisco itself. Despite the dreamlike atmosphere of the film, you can tell that Talbot and company have great affection and knowledge of San Francisco itself. They have specific knowledge of the city itself – the neighborhoods, and how they have changed. Where the black people ended up, as they started to be pushed out of the city proper by rising rents and property values, and rich yuppies and hipsters moved in. Even the grungy city buses get a kind of romantic treatment – much of the films great conversations happen on that bus. Jimmie is seen with his skateboard throughout the film – and he rides it down the iconic hills throughout the city – drawing more stares than he used to. This is his city, but he’s becoming a stranger.

 

It is also a tale of male friendship. Mont is in nearly as many scenes as Jimmie – and the two of them are extremely close. Outside the house of Mont’s grandfather (Danny Glover) – where the pair stay, there is a Greek Chorus of sorts in the form of a gang of black men, acting out their ideas of black masculinity in violent ways – most of it posturing for each other to look and feel tough for an audience of just themselves. They mock Jimmie and Mont in the kind of homophobic ways we expect – there is no evidence to suggest Jimmie and Mont are gay at all – but they don’t act the same way they do, so they must be right? And Mont is a writer – plays mostly – and he bases his latest on the gang outside – namely Kofi (Jamal Trulove) – who has a history with Jimmie, but is also most invested in making the others in the Greek Chorus know how tough he is. Mont is as interesting, as complex a character as Jimmie – if slightly more realistic. He goes along with his friend’s dream of his home, but knows how far-fetched it is. Talbot’s supporting cast has some very good, recognizable actors in it – Danny Glover, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock, Rob Morgan, etc. – but it is anchored by two great performances by relative newcomers Fails and Majors.

 

Yet, it may be the other, non-character driven moments that haunt me in the days after seeing the film. A street singer singing “If You’re Going to San Francisco” over a sad montage in the back part of the film for example is haunting and beautiful. Just those shots of Jimmie riding his skateboard down the street – either with Mont on the back, or running behind, or just by himself. The film is utterly beautiful – but in a melancholy way. The film is sad for the San Francisco that everyone involved in the film remember, but is slipping through their fingers. The film reminded me a little of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk – not because they are both “black” films, but because they are both haunting, beautiful, sad films that find a way to do something very difficult – making dramatic what is really a systematic issue.

 

The film as we suspect from the outset how it must. This isn’t going to be a happy ending – not really. But I’m not sure it’s that sad of an ending either. It is an ending of acceptance in a way – even if you don’t like it, you have to accept it. Or as Jimmie says late in the film – “You cannot hate it, unless you’ve loved it first”.

Movie Review: Diane

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Diane **** / *****

Directed by: Kent Jones   

Written by: Kent Jones.

Starring: Mary Kay Place (Diane), Jake Lacy (Brian), Estelle Parsons (Mary), Andrea Martin (Bobbie), Deirdre O'Connell (Donna), Glynnis O'Connor (Dottie), Joyce Van Patten (Madge), Kerry Flanagan (Nurse Jackie), Phyllis Somerville (Ina), Celia Keenan-Bolger (Tally), Ray Iannicelli (Al Rymanowski), David Tuttle (Minister), Marcia Haufrecht (Carol Rymanowski). 

 

Diane is one of those women we all kind of know, but we don’t often think about. She’s older now – retired, single, her only child long since moved out of the house. But she isn’t lonely in part because she’s always doing something – always on the move. She has a large contingent of people around her – Aunts and Uncles, cousins, friends and Diane is always popping by to check on them, maybe drop off a casserole to someone who is recovering from surgery. She spends a lot of time at the bedside of a cousin dying of cancer. She wishes she could help her son – Brian (Jake Lacy) – who is addicted to drugs but she can’t do much for him, unless he wants to do something for himself. He isn’t homeless – not yet at least. Diane is always running from one place to another – helping others, going to dinner with friends, volunteering at a soup kitchen, etc. For the most part, she seems completely selfless. At least at first.

 

Diane is played in a remarkable performance by Mary Kay Place – and if you don’t know the name, you know the actress – who has (as of this moment) 135 credits on IMDB, and has appeared on every TV show you can think of, and in countless movies you have seen. She is one of the great character actors out there – who shows up for a scene here and there, an episode here and there, and is always great – and never gets the credit, never gets the spotlight or the lead role she deserves. Here, Kent Jones – longtime film critic and Festival programmer turned filmmaker (he’s made some docs before, but this – at the age of 60 is his feature debut) has crafted a perfect role for Place – inspired by his own mother. He then filled out the cast with character actors all equally as good as Place – all of whom could (and probably should) carry their own movie like this. Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Phyllis Somerville, Deirdre O’Connell, etc. The result is a movie full of people who know how to act, and know just what it means to be supportive in their scenes.

 

Diane is a tricky character – she starts as this cliché – the mother we perhaps all know, who is constantly worried about everyone else, except herself. This is the mother you often see mocked in shows – or on Twitter – as being overbearing, etc. – but very rarely do we get an exploration of them, and what makes them tick. As the movie progresses, and we start to get to know her Diane – and her past – it becomes clear that perhaps she isn’t motivated so much by “goodness” and “selflessness” – as it first appears – but by guilt. There is an incident in the past – a summer – in which Diane did something she has never been able to forgive herself for. And while everyone around her – including those that she hurt then – seem to have forgiven her, or at least moved on and don’t like to bring it up, she hasn’t. It isn’t an awful thing – no one died, etc. – but for her, she cannot forgive herself. And it haunts her in a way. Which raises the question – does it matter if she acts the way she does out of kindness or guilt? Is it what drives her that is important, or what she does?

 

The first hour of the movie seems to take place over the span of a few weeks and/or months. The last 30 minutes has a few leaps forward in time – everyone starts dying around Diane, as we expect that they will, either because we see them sick, or they are just old. Her son replaces one addiction with another – and they aren’t all that much closer as a result. And still, Diane keeps on chugging along – keeps up that mental list in her head of all the things she has to get done, all the people she wants to “do for”. Lessons aren’t really learned, as much as time just chugs along, indifferent to what Diane or anyone else thinks.

 

Through it all, Place holds the center of every scene, and does a remarkable job. Diane is more flawed, more human and complex than we think in the first few scenes. And she brings life to this movie that seems so simple at first, and becomes oh so complex by the end.

Movie Review: A Colony

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A Colony *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles.

Written by: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles.

Starring: Emilie Bierre (Mylia), Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie (Jimmy), Irlande Côté (Camille), Noémie Godin-Vigneau (Nathalie), Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier (Jacinthe), Robin Aubert (Henri).

 

You would be forgiven for thinking in the early scenes of Une Colonie – the Quebec film from debut filmmaker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles that you are basically in for a French Canadian version of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Both films focus on a girl roughly the same age, who is shy and awkward, and does what she can to fit in with the rest of her classmates. There are other similarities as well – so comparisons between the two films are likely inevitable, and don’t really do Une Colonie any favors, as Burnham’s film is clearly superior. But as it moves along, you notice the differences more than the similarities – the types of things that Dulude-De Celles is doing that Burnham didn’t attempt. She is trying to make a film with a slightly wider angle lens here. Yes, it’s still about the trials and tribulations of being a 13-year-old girl – but it makes connections to the world outside of her immediate vicinity as well. It has to do with the title of the film, which is about colonization. Clearly, the main character is responsible for that – for what has been done to Indigenous Canadians in the past or present. But it explores perhaps what she can do, in her very small way.

 

The film stars Emilie Bierre (so good in a small role in Philippe Lasange’s Genesis recently as well) as Mylia – a quiet, shy 13-year-old girl in rural Quebec. She has a little sister – Camille (Irlande Cote) who is a little weird – perhaps no weirder that Mylia, but less afraid to show others her weirdness in that way little kids can be fearless. Their parents are going through some stuff – and perhaps won’t make it. All Mylia really wants is to fit in at school and have friends. And then she makes two – who couldn’t be more different from each other. The first is Jacinthe (Cassandra Gosselin-Pelletier), who is what Mylia thinks she wants in a friend – one of the popular girls, who accepts Mylia into her group, as long as she doesn’t rock the boat, or question what Jacinthe does too much. The other is Jimmy (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), an Abenaki boy who lives on the reserve close to town. The film certainly hints at making Jimmy into a noble savior figure –we first see him rescuing Camille as she is being taunted by the other kids in the film’s opening scene, and later we will see him rescue Mylia and get her home when she drinks too much “punch” at Jacinthe’s party. You cringe a little when you think this is going to be another story where the Indigenous character exists solely to teach the white people in the movie something – but luckily, Jimmy becomes a more complex character after those initial appearances. He is a nice guy – a real one – but he isn’t perfect, and he doesn’t just take the casual and not so casual racism he faces on a day-to-day basis in stride – it makes him angry. He is also capable of lashing out – more out of disappointment than angry – at Mylia, like when she tells him she’s dressing up with Jacinthe and her friends as a girl group for a Halloween party, and he wonders why she doesn’t go as a “warrior” instead of a “slut”.

 

But you can see where this is going – and you are pretty much right. Eventually, Mylia will have to decide between what she wants in a friendship – the real one that Jimmy offers her, which comes with the added bonus that he genuinely cares for, and likes Camille, or the kind of fake friendship that Jacinthe offers. But even that isn’t quite so simple – as the film is more a journey for Mylia than anything else. At the end of the movie, she’s pretty much in the exact same situation she was in at the beginning of the film – but now, she is better able to handle it, and stay true to herself.

 

The film is well-made by Dulude-De Celles in a casual, observational style. She doesn’t provide Mylia any opportunities – like the Vlog’s in Eighth Grade did – for her to tell her feelings to the camera, but then again, it isn’t as necessary, as she has more friends that she converses with here – and the stakes are laid out fairly explicitly. The film could have descended into cliché and sentimentality – and although it comes close at times, it never quite does. A lot of that is due to the performances – all of which appealing by the young cast. All three of Bierre, Whiteduck-Lavoie and Cote are appealing young performers, and they carry the movie through any rough patches there may be.

 

Ultimately, I do wish that a film that is about finding yourself, and being true to yourself no matter how weird that may be was a little weirder itself. Ultimately, the film pretty much does what you expect it to. I do like the young performances, the direction – and the attempt to show normal Indigenous people in Canada, and have the film not be blind to the fact that they are Indigenous, but not let that completely define a character like Jimmy as well. The film won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture this year – and while that is a little much (especially considering the wonderful, aforementioned Genesis was also nominated) – it certainly is a good film, and makes me interested to see what Dulude-De Celles – and her talented young cast – all do next.

Movie Review: The Great Hack

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The Great Hack *** / *****

Directed by: Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim.

Written by: Karim Amer and Erin Barnett and Pedro Kos.

 

If you didn’t follow along with the Cambridge Analytica scandal when it broke, then the new Netflix documentary The Great Hack will give you a good recap of what happened – and why it was so bad. On a wider level, the film gives you a decent enough overview to how tech companies have turned us all into willing products – where we hand over our data to companies who then both profit from, and weaponized, all that data that we handed them. True, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was somewhat different – because they found a way to not just harvest the data you willing gave Facebook, but also the data of your Facebook friends. But for the most part, we hand our data willing to companies – we do these stupid survives on Facebook or other sites, thinking that we’re going to a fun result – what Game of Thrones character are you? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? But these quizzes all ask specific questions to learn more and more about us. In some ways, all this seems innocent enough – we get targeted ads based on our web searches, we get recommendations based on things we shop for or buy, etc. But what the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed was just how a company can take this all, and turn it into a political weapon – a weapon that helps Donald Trump become President or helps Brexit become a reality, etc. If you have been following along with this story then, well, I’m not sure what The Great Hack really adds to the subject.

 

The film does do a good job of laying out what happened, and why it matters. The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr is our guide for much of this, and she in invaluable in laying it all, basically because she has spent so long covering the scandal in the first place. But while Cadwalladr is undeniably fascinating, it’s kind of disappointing that she’s the most fascinating person in the doc – basically because she isn’t telling us anything that her work hasn’t already told us. The film tries to add another level of interest with someone like David Carroll – a media professor, whose lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica serves as the framing device for the movie itself. Basically, Cambridge Analytica claimed that they had 5,000 data points on the people in their database – and Carroll’s lawsuit was to get them to give him the data that they collected on him specifically. There are some moments of Carroll in his classroom – talking to students who are younger than him – who never knew a time without the internet, without social media, etc. – who do not see it as such a big deal. I almost wanted more of what those young people had to say – because the film pretty much brings them up, and then dismisses them – like the old guy in the room who hears the question from the younger people, and tells them to sit down, shut up and listen to what he’s going to teach you. I was interested in what these younger people may have thought after it was explained just what Cambridge Analytica did if they still thought it wasn’t that big a deal – but the movie seems less interested in that.

 

I also wanted a little more information from the two people inside Cambridge Analytica who came forward to give us insights into the company itself. Christopher Wylie got more media attention (at least from what I saw) – and the movie lets him speak. It does bring up the other side – that he left the company before much of the scandal, etc. – but just kind of leaves that there. More problematic is Brittany Kaiser, who fashions herself – and the movie seemingly agrees – as a whistleblower, but she is basically blowing the whistle on herself. She isn’t someone who saw others doing something immoral, and felt the need to come forward. She basically admits that much of it she did herself – or was involved with. And she doesn’t seem all that guilt stricken over it either. I wish the film – which spends a lot of time with her – had pushed her harder into her own actions, her own culpability, etc.

 

And for that matter, I wish the film was more critical of us – those in the audience who willingly goes along with this all, and then shrugs out shoulders when we find out about it. As the movie makes clear, Cambridge Analytica played a role – perhaps not the deciding role, but not an insignificant one – in getting someone like Donald Trump elected, or something like Brexit happen – and in other elections, where they encourage young people not to vote, etc. It is not just collecting data to let us know of a new product we may want to buy – that’s creepy enough as it is, as anyone who has ever bought anything from Amazon, and then sees adds for related products on every site they visit after can attest. But it’s using the data to target – and lie to – people. To stoke their fears, to get them to think what they want them to – regardless of whether or its true. It’s not a benign force – but an actively insidious one. Yes, Cambridge Analytica is defunct now – but you’re crazy to think it was the only company doing that.

 

The Great Hack seems to not be as interested in that. It wants to lay out some facts, without getting too personal about it, not pushing too much further. As that, it’s a fine documentary – and if you don’t know about this scandal, you should see it. It will make you angry, Just, not as angry as you probably should be.

DEVIL'S EXPRESS (Gang Wars, 1976)

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First-time director Barry Rosen bet on a Seventies genre trifecta by making a blaxploitation martial-arts horror film, and while I wouldn't call it a good movie it is an often-fascinating document of the fantasy life springing from the grungy state of urban life at that time. In its Mummy-inspired prologue, ancient Chinese monks lower a mysterious casket, with an amulet attached, into a hole in the earth. To ensure that no one knows the location of the burial, the leader of the little group kills everyone else before putting himself to the sword. While he might well have waited until they'd all done something to cover the hole, no one actually discovers the mystery inside until centuries later.

In 1970s Harlem, martial-arts instructor Luke (Warhawk Tanzania) spars with his friend Cris (Larry Fleischman). It's a tense friendship since Luke is black and Cris is a white cop, but as Luke explains to his suspicious students, he owes Cris a favor. In any event, Luke and his student-buddy Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan) are soon off to Hong Kong for some elite training. Rodan's head really isn't into the discipline -- he's more of a thug at heart -- but Luke earns a diploma after a match with the master. After that, Luke is sent to an island to meditate, while Rodan is tasked with watching over him. Bored by it all, Rodan just happens to discover the pit that generations of random explorers and possible treasure hunters managed to miss. Lowering himself in with ease, he snatches the amulet and takes it home to America with him.

The Hong Kong-New York steamer has another passenger: a Chinese man who suddenly finds himself possessed by some unseen entity. By the time he reaches the U.S. he's a staggering, bug-eyed mess terrified by every bright light and sharp sound until he finds a sort of shelter in the subway system. Now whatever's inside him can come into its own, though the filmmakers don't quite have the money to do more than suggest a chest-bursting exit with a lot of bleeding.

Meanwhile, Rodan and his gang buddies escalate their feud with a Chinese gang after he gets ripped off in a cocaine deal. In a violent variation on West Side Story the Chinese and black/Hispanic gangs perform martial-arts rumbles in the slums of New York, where the producers enjoyed extensive municipal cooperation despite their film's unflattering snapshot of Seventies squalor. As the gang war escalates, Cris and the rest of the police begin investigating a subway serial killer. While his comedy-relief partner invokes urban legends of mutant animals, Cris suspects that the killings are gang-related, despite Luke's vehement pushback against that suggestion. Luke's attitude toward his friends is strangely ambivalent. He warns them constantly against using martial arts in anger, but it's unclear whether he even realizes that Rodan is a drug dealer or if he would care. He lives in a sort of ebony tower, content to make love to his girlfriend and improve his knowledge until the killings come to close to home.

As you might guess, the subway entity is drawn to Rodan for the amulet he wears -- but by the time it finally catches up with him, the Chinese gang has snatched it away. That's how their wise old mentor is finally able to explain the actual situation to Luke, once the Chinese convince him that they weren't the ones who slammed Rodan face-first into a transformer. Only Luke has the mental discipline to defeat the monster, which adds an arsenal of psychic attacks to its arsenal for the final showdown in the tunnels. It takes a variety of forms, including Rodan and later two fighters at once, before trying to convince Luke that trains are bearing down on him. For Rosen it's a brave effort at something trippy and supernatural, but when the monster finally shows its true form and goes for a death grapple the scene is too dark to appreciate either the monster get-up or the climactic action.

While Devil's Express ends on an underwhelming note, it's an admirable B-film in which everyone seems to be trying hard to make an impression. Warhawk Tanzania (who made only one more film) is no real actor but at least errs on the side of excess, and while the fighting isn't much by Chinese standards (and the gore effects are mostly laughable) Rosen and his co-writers manage to invest each encounter with some dramatic urgency. They also find time for gratuitously entertaining stuff like a fight between a male bully and a female bartender at Luke's favorite watering hole and a cameo by misanthropic performance artist Brother Theodore -- he may be remembered from the early years of David Letterman's late-night show -- as a priest slowly driven mad by the subway killings. There's a likable cacophany to the pre-climactic scene where Luke negotiates with the cops to let him go into the tunnels alone while the priest rants to the assembled crowd about dead gods, pestiferous rats and whatnot. Rosen's enthusiasm makes it regrettable that he directed only one more film, though he's gone on to a long career as a TV producer. For Devil's Express he threw a lot of stuff at the screen to see what would stick, and that's almost certain to leave at least something for some of us to like.

Avengers: Infinity War (5 Stars)

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Despite my love for this film, I have to point out – yet again! – that it's not the same Thanos that we know in the comics.

In the comics written by Jim Starlin, Thanos' motivation for killing half of the universe isn't to achieve a cosmic balance or to solve the problems of overpopulation. It's a sacrifice for the woman he loves, Death. He thinks it's something that will please her and make her love him. I don't know whether I'll get as far as the Infinity Gauntlet comics in my Marvel Years posts. That's in 1991, and I'll probably stop when I get to 1984. I'm not sure yet.

Thanos would never retire and become a hermit or a farmer. If he destroyed half of the universe he would want to rule over the other half.

So much to his motivation. As for the Snap, it wasn't a magical act powered by the gloves. He could have killed half of the universe merely by thinking about it. The finger snapping is just a gesture to show that killing trillions of people is as easy as snapping his fingers.

What I likie about this film is its epic quality. There are battles taking place at the same time all over the world, and all over the universe. Some of the battles are very close, and we expect the good guys to win. In other battles it's obvious that they're too weak, but all the battles are enjoyable.

We can almost like Thanos. He's an environmentalist who is carrying out a plan to save the universe. In the film at least. Maybe he's not Thanos as we see him in the comics, but his benevolent nature is suitable for the film. Films profit from having villains that we can sympathise with. That's not so necessary in comics. It's just an added plus.

"You can't be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man if there's no neighbourhood".

Don't worry, Peter Parker, there will still be a neighbourhood after Thanos snaps his fingers; there will just be less children playing in the street.

Is there anyone else who disagrees with the German translation of "Wakanda Forever"?

This character isn't named in the film, but in the credits she's listed as Proxima Midnight, a post-canon servant of Thanos. She was played by two actresses: Carrie Coon in facial close-ups, and Monique Ganderton when her full body was shown. She returns in "Avengers Endgame", but in that film she's only played by Monique Ganderton. I think that she has a fascinating face. Fascinatingly evil.

I intend to rewatch "Avengers Endgame" tomorrow. I can judge the films better if I watch them back to back.

Success Rate:  + 4.5

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Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 07/29/2019

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Well it turns out that Strange Horizons wasn't quite done with July despite already putting out five issues. This latest one contains what the publication is calling three poems, though the later two are graphic as well as text. Mixing art and poetry is always an interesting experience, and the two works on display (by the same author with different artists) do a fine job of showing how the two mediums can synergize, building off each other to be more than either of them would have been separate. It's a great way to close out the month and celebrate what Strange Horizons has managed to do with its Fund Drive, and what it always does with its mix of strange, speculative art. To the reviews!

Poetry:

"Borrower" by Cislyn Smith

This is a great poetic take on superheroes and especially one superhero who isn't like the others. On the one hand, the piece is a sharp critique of depictions of superheroes, pointing out the safety of their lives, the ways that they value their brands more than actually making a difference. They are commercial because of the nature of the medium, because they are there to sell comic books, which always infects their stories, which require conflicts that don't end, that recycle and loop. And so the heroes become trapped in that mentality, saving the day but only because it was easy enough, familiar enough. And behind the scenes there is a new kind of hero who is doing the heavy lifting, who is acting not in a commercial sense, not for a brand identity, but because she knows that the heroes can't be trusted, that someone has to be looking out for people from all kinds of threats. And her power, to be able to borrow other people's knowledge and powers, gives her the perfect vehicle to do just that. It's a neat poem because it works as a superhero story and as a critique of them. Because really it does work as far as superhero narratives go, with her powers allowing her to save the day, but also with an insight to know that she's only a hero so long as she lives by the idea to do no harm, to work not for the fame but because it needs doing. And in that, the poem gives the role of hero to all the people in the background of the larger stories, the cleaners and servers, the workers who are invisible otherwise. And it's a piece that comes together nicely, playing with the tropes of the genre and ending on a sort of reminder that without the people in the background, the world is a very empty place. A wonderful read!

"Visit the Bottomless Pit" by John Philip Johnson, art by Bob Hall

This is a rather haunting mix of dark and sweet. It features a bottomless pit, as the title suggest, a kind of tourist attraction that doesn't really rate too highly on anyone's radar. It's something to see, not really something to do, because it's just a hole in the earth. But the comic builds up a nice mystery surrounding it. It doesn't seem to be managed, doesn't seem to be overseen by anyone. There's no admission mentioned, and the place has no guard rail. There seems almost to be a magic to it, because while there's no organization to it there are signs and presumably people selling souvenirs. But there also seems to be a hunger to it, an inevitable tragedy that plays out again and again, distracted parents not seeing as their child...slips...in. And I'm fascinated by the narrator of the piece, too, a watcher who sees one such fall. They never really get a face, just a voice that seems to know a bit too much about the pit and what it is. And what it must be like to tumble endlessly down. There's a part of me that wonders if the person isn't more than just a watcher, if they have some part of play in the falls, but that doesn't seem to have any support in the text. Rather maybe it is just another visitor who is haunted by this vision of a child falling endlessly, wanting to wrap that darkness, that terror (that the comic captures very well) in something that is happier. Brighter. That eases some of the darkness and imagines for the child an ending that isn't either endless falling or the suddenness of impact. That leaves room for the magic of the pit to not be evil but rather an entrance to a place laced with magic. The art captures this well with colors and visuals, the darkness of the second page giving way to a much brighter third. Whatever the case, though, the piece pulls back from tragedy and at least imagines an ending that holds to hope. A great read!

"The Stars My Destination" by John Philip Johnson, art by Adam Martin

This comic is longer, five pages rather than three, and features an entirely different scope and scale and setting. It features a more definite narrator, what seems to be a robotic entity, though their nature isn't exactly fully explained. They exist in a sort of graveyard, a scrapyard of broken ships and shattered hulls. A fragile environment that is still vast and cold, where the narrator is very much a being that fits in there. And yet as the words of the piece seem to evoke this enormous cosmic indifference, and a person who defies and rejects conventional description and definition, there's a different narrative playing out. The visuals paint the picture of the narrator finding a tiny bit of organic life, a plant kept in a vial, floating in the cold dark of space. Again, the words seem to speak to this desire to be beyond the stories that people will tell, free of the meanings that people heap onto actions, seeking metaphor and allegory and the like. So that this act of planting, of finding new life in the barren landscape, something that could be rich in literary meaning, becomes instead perhaps something different. Something that doesn't conform to the familiar structures, to the organic triumphing in a hostile environment. I feel that the work encourages people to reach past the easiest of interpretations and instead simply inhabit this moment and this act. Not to seek to give it a moralized valuing that places the plant as more beautiful than the empty hulls, the distances and the silences. Not that we can't find it beautiful, but that like the birth of a star it's not necessarily meant to be witnessed, isn't itself a work of art. Which makes the fact that this is a work of art so interesting, and I love that meta twist. It's a wonderful work, and one definitely worth spending some time with. It's stark, and dark, and lovely, and a great way to close out the issue!

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Retro Review: The 6th Day (2000) #Schwarzenegger

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The 6th Day
2000
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenneger, Michael Rappaport, Tony Goldwyn, Michael Rooker, Sarah Wynter, Robert Duvall
Genre: Science Fiction Action
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $96 million

Plot: A man meets a clone of himself and stumbles into a grand conspiracy about clones taking over the world

'Another Post-Early 1990s Arnie Effort Bites The Dust'

The 6th Day was released 10 years after the release of Arnold Schwarzenneger's Total Recall; however, circulated at a period when his Hollywood blockbuster status made less sense as it continued to drift further away after True Lies (IMO, his last best movie), the film is directed by Roger Spottiswoode, of whom but for the 007-based Tomorrow Never Dies (seen by many as one of the weakest and forgettable Bond movies, ever), and Turner & Hooch - which I enjoyed -, and Straw Dogs, has always been a lacklustre filmmaker, whose approach lacks cutting edge and boldness, as exemplified in the 1986 sports comedy, The Best of Times starring pre-Hollywood stars, Robin Williams and Kurt Russell. 

Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a family man who arrives home one day to see that a clone has replaced him. In a future where human cloning is universally and socially accepted and plunged further into a world that he thought was prosperous and happy, Gibson discovers he has been cloned and that has to evade the bad guys who are after him and get to the bottom of whom and what is behind the horrible things happening to him and his family.

The 6th Day continued the trend of progressively worst, or be it least appealing and demanding Schwarzenegger movies ever produced from the mid-1990s onwards. Many may cite comedies, Kindergarten Cop or even the much-maligned comedy, Junior as the film/s whereby Arnie jumped the shark and whose career never recovered after that. I beg to differ on this, - although right after the release of the James Cameron 1994 actioner, the less conventional his movies were, the less impressive they became: from Collateral Damage, Millenial flop End of Days to the unsavoury post-2010 actioner, Sabotage, but for Escape Plan, the quality with each release dwindled.

This one has the feel of a B-movie and much like with many of Arnie's films, post-mid-1990s, The 6th Day is less of a Schwarzenneger movie, but a bog-standard sci-fi thriller and a G-rated Total Recall, - yet the comparisons with the R and 18-rated Paul Verhoeven effort come to an end. Minus the fun, spontaneity, wit and entertainment value it possesses The 6th Day doesn't have much in the way of charm and verve to make it a memorable classic. This is very similar to Virtuosity and as much as he tries, Arnie feels kind of out of place here.

This is bargain bin Arnie, of whom for die-hard fans wouldn't mind, but this doesn't feel like something he'd appear in. His performance is stilted and nothing about Adam rings appealing or like someone we ought to take an interest in. This character Adam was Arnie's attempt to pull off the actor thing like he did in Total Recall as Doug Quaid; but The 6th Day is nowhere near the level of that movie, as the writing is lacklustre, the plot doesn't try to test the main character, the supporting characters are forgettable and arguably, it is more boring. It is devoid of characterisation throughout; Roger Spottiswoode fumbles in the execution as he fails to get to the heart of and delve into the protagonists and antagonists' actions. Robert Duvall tries in a bit-part role, but the rest of the supporting players do not seem to make an effort with their performances; Terry Crews is in it briefly until he is killed off, Tony Goldwyn as Drucker doesn't look like he can be a bad guy, even though he plays as one here and thus, is gravely miscast.

There are special effects, explosions, the action is decent at best but quantity-wise, there just wasn't enough of it in abundance, the plot is handled in a complicatedly absurd fashion for anyone to wrap their heads around, & despite some of the technological advances through the cars and the usage of computers, The 6th Day isn't imaginative as it tries to come across, and is thus, very unremarkable. Ultimately, the action picks up from the final third, but even that was scant consolation.

Though it is not amongst his sheer worst, this was far from a return to form for Schwarzenneger, a 2000s Total Recall but minus all the great things that made it a classic; as Arnie movies go, The 6th Day was a rough, occasionally conflicting, muddled and unsatisfying watch that tries to be cleverer for its own good, in place of characterisation and memorable scenes -, and yet this was also a film where it didn't quite live up to what it could have and should have promised.

Final Verdict:

This is so easily throw away and has little to redeem itself as his big hitters such as Terminator 2, True Lies, Total Recall, Predator still remains as Schwarzenneger's movie elite, whilst this one is barely regarded and perceived as one. The 6th Day isn't just a generic B/Z-movie action wannabe flick, it is also one of his least memorable ones too, as, under Roger Spottiswoode's vision, its ideas and potential have practically gone to waste.

As a fan of the early 1980s to early 1990s Arnold Schwarzenneger, it remains an essentially uneventful, middling and empty-headed affair and is, therefore, not that good that it just isn't worth revisiting.


Overall: