Category: Film Review

Day of Wrath (1985) Den gneva

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1h and 24m, rated 6.1 by 445 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: USSR.

Verdict:  Lugubrious. 

Tagline:  [Ask the bear]

An American journalist finally gets permission to enter a restricted area in the Appalachian Mountains, but before he sets out he is abducted and….  [Who knows.]  But he has little memory of this excursion.  It might have been a dream. Off he goes to meet many hillbilly stereotypes, including an idiot savant of mathematics destined to be an actuary.

There is a reference to genetic manipulation of bears to increase intelligence and that may have something to do with the restrictions.  Yes, brown bears.  

***

The A.I. subtitles were nearly unintelligible but amusing. I never did figure out the plot. Nor did the poor quality of the video help. 

Some Soviet filmmakers masked criticism of their own society by setting stories elsewhere, especially in science fiction, and this might an example of that.  By the way, this also occurred in the States, the examples being the Twilight Zone or Star Trek on themes no commercial sponsor would otherwise accept. 

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) Dorosute no hate de bokura

IMDb meta-data is 1h and 10m, rated 7.3 by 8,900 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Time Travel (sorta).

DNA: Japan.

Verdict:  Fun while it lasts. 

Tagline:  What’s 2-minutes among friends?

The owner of a very small cafe is surprised, then stunned, when he turns on the computer screen to see a video message from himself! From the 2-minutes in the future! What to do?

Well, Present-He does what Future-He tells himself to do, and inevitably the secret gets out to his cronies who usually gather after-hours at the cafe.  Shenanigans ensue as they learn how to stretch that 2-minutes into ever more time. Ergo, it is not exactly time travel, because they are in the future and present at the same time. This duplication confuses both them and the viewer.   

The shenanigans includes intercepting a payoff to gangsters who come looking for the dosh.  All that excitement alerts the Time Police who also show up to put things right, but, well, by then things have gone pretty far…and some of the characters like it.

***

It zips along with high octane, leaving no time to question the origin of the first video and its follow-ups, which multiply from ever further in the future. Pedants need not apply.

Oh, and the reference to Droste cocoa powder governs proceedings. (Intriguing, no?)

There is lots of bumf in reviews about the technical aspects which left me cold, but the gist of it is that it was shot in a single take using  a cell phone camera.  

The End of the Lonely Island (2017) Gu day zhong joie

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 1m, rated 5.3 by 22 cinematizens.

Genre: SyFy.

DNA: People’s Republic of China.

Verdict: Huh?

Tagline: Windows 95 strikes again!

Chinese AI is the villain called TESS (aka Windows 95) which has unleashed a worldwide epidemic that kills all and for which there is no remedy. One response is to launch a deep space mission to find another planet to despoil and another is to wind back the clock somehow on the Lonely Island of the title where there is an abandoned research facility that might have a key, a cure, or an Act III.  Our heroine goes to the island while her beau rides the rockets. 

Now I may have muddled all that because I found it hard to follow, it being fast and cryptic, and short. 

The cinematography is superb, and likewise the acting.  I hardly recognised her from one emotional state to another.  The chap shows less in a stoic kind of way.  Plus I liked the street views of Shanghai. 

However, I never did figure out the plot, despite what seemed to be good subtitles by an AI program!  Sounds of irony off stage.  

The intel on IMDb says it is an independent production, a rarity from the PRC.  

Magare! Supûn (2009) Go Find a Psychic!

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 46m, rated 6.5 by 610 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Japan.

Verdict: Amusing. 

Tagline: Yes, Virginia.

A television program concerns the paranormal…real or fake!  Each week someone claiming paranormal abilities is the guest who demonstrates that ability.  Bring on the spoons! Two regulars offer comments, the believer and the skeptic who always prevails.  

It sounds as loopy as some of the (un)reality television I have seen here (from the bicycle seat at the gym).

As much fun as it is for the audience to ridicule failed contestants, the ratings are falling and the director is desperate for a boost.  Ergo he decides they need to do better than those who volunteer for the show. No, they have to go find some paranormal talent. To that end he dispatches his feckless assistant to get some real abnormals, as he says.  

Where to start such a quest?  A trip to Wellington (NZ) Paranormal is too expensive so, she settles for reading the National Inquirer, News of the World, Sydney Telegraph, and other credulous tabloids with stories of two-headed cows, UFOs among the garden gnomes in the Imperial Gardens, psychic cooks, miracle cures for stupidity, and the like.   

From this research she identifies places where the ley lines must be crossed, and sets out on the train with her roll-abroad kit.  

Among the viewers of this terrible television program is a group of genuine but secret paranormals who meet every Monday at showtime in an otherwise closed cafe run by one of their number to watch the latest debunking.  Each is sworn to secrecy about their powers and each other. One has X-Ray vision. Another has telekinetic powers.  A third can read minds. A fourth, despite appearances, has super strength … There are six of them.  

Then by a mischance a seventh appears…and confusion follows, just as the television journalist stumbles into the cafe, exhausted and frustrated from her own recent encounters with individuals who claim such powers but don’t have them. She would be happy for a cup of tea and snack, and she is hard to resist, so the cafe owner obliges. 

While the paranormals try not reveal themselves to her for what they are, they would also like to — you know — get closer to her.  Hint, hint.  That is complicated by the seventh interloper. The original six are so used to concealing their true selves from other people, they just don’t know how to talk to anyone, let alone a good looking young woman with media connections.     

There follows a comedy of errors which is good humoured but stretched thin, and it has a denouement that was from a shelved Disney movie. Did I mention it was Christmas eve?

Attraction (2017)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 12m, rated 5.6 by 14,121 cinematizens. 

Genre: SyFy; Species: First Contact.

DNA: Russia. 

Verdict: Thoughtful.

Tagline: Oops!  

The aliens may have superior technology but when a fuse blows, well it blows, and the next thing you know a gigantic space ship is cartwheeling down the street in central Moscow, leaving a path of death and destruction behind.  Was the pilot under the influence of vodka?  What now? Indeed, a good question.  

As per the script of It Came from Outer Space (1953), and we even see the name of lead from that film on a poster early on, the aliens just want to change the fuse and go home in time for the big game. Problem is, no fuses.  Inspired by Qantas, UFO management has decreed no spare parts be carried to cut costs.  

How do the locals react? That is the main focus of the film.  Of course, the army is much in evidence, and politicians posture – at a far safer distance than the troops.  But stop right there. The usual stereotypes from The Arrival (1996) or Arrival (2016) have the week off.

The army officer is cautious and the troops are disciplined, and he advises patience, after all we shot it down.* While one politician pontificates for the camera, the minister is no hurry to make a mistake. Putin is too busy grooming Trump, so he delegates a minister to deal with the aliens to ensure deniability.    

No doubt the reluctance immediately to launch into shoot ‘em up has put off many raters. (There is a sequel where this thirst is quenched.)

We see reactions among students, soldiers, citizens whose family and friends were killed in the crash, and more, but no churchman.  Of all the unscrupulous charlatans, you’d think they would be well represented, but no.  

The cinematography is superb, as are the effects and CGI, as is the acting, especially from the the thirty-year-olds playing high school students.  No irony intended, because they do it well.  Best of all, no brilliant geniuses, that lazy cliché of far too many screenwriters who project their own wishful thinking in that trope.

Nonetheless, several of my well-worn complaints apply. It is far too long. The similarity of the lover boy and alien is confusing.  Why does the alien sport designer face fuzz, after all, and why did he shed the impenetrable armour? Early on not quite sure how the armour clad alien communicated with the colonel. What was the point about water?  Why didn’t the alien(s) remain in the indestructible ship? Nor how Pauline escaped from the peril of the crumbling apartment building.  How did they get into the hospital?  The transfusion, well….  Loose ends, there are many.  

Still far more intelligent and insightful than the Hollywood block busters of this ilk.  Right up to the explosion of violence in the last 30-minutes when it descends to the arrested development of La La Land.  

*The blown fuse took out the stealth cloak, and once revealed, the Red Air Force shot the indestructible (?) UFO down and it crashed in middle of Moscow, but no where near the Kremlin.  Too bad.  

Le dernier combat (1983)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h 29m, rated 6.7 by 6643 cinematizens.

Genre: Post apocalypse.

DNA: France.

Verdict: A quiet version of Mad Max.

Tagline: Sshh.

Man roams around a destroyed world of office buildings, defiled apartments, crashed American cars, pursued by four or five other men. Nary a word is spoken, nor is there a tendentious narration so de rigour in Hollywood to explain and blame the situation on the audience. It just is.  

He flees on his Leonardo da Vinci homemade airplane to other, equally desolate parts.  

Meanwhile we meet the Doctor hold up in his clinic fending off a lone Barbarian at the gate.  Man and Doctor unite against Barbarian, but, well, he is a Barbarian and subdues them, but Man escapes.  

Yes, in a bow to Hollywood conventions there is a woman to fight over, in fact, two of them, but they have but five minutes of plot time. Most of the time director Luc Besson, before he surrendered to Hollywood, shows that a little can be a lot.  (A long way from Valerian where a lot is a little.)

It makes no sense but moves at brisk pace, and hangs together, almost.  Only two words are spoken. Correction, only one word is spoken but it is spoken twice. ‘Bonjour.’  

I watched this from my private collection via Plex in a hotel room in Canowindra (look it up).  

Blue Desert (2013) Deserto Azul 

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 34m, rated 7.4 (!) by 52 cinematizens.  

DNA: Brazil.

Genre: Boring.

Verdict: Nothing comes from nothing.  

Tagline: Is this all there is?

A movie about the purpose of life and the meaning of human existence, modestly declaimed the writer and the director.  

With that pretension stated, what follows is an indulgent account of the angst of an adolescent posturing this way and that. In case it was all too deep for the viewer some scenes are repeated two or three times, and there is a narrative to guide the dull wits like me.  

He is a poor little rich boy who seems to have no responsibilities or ambitions.  He meets or perhaps dreams of a man even more useless than he is, painting the Atacama Desert blue.

It takes place in the Jetsons’ Brasilia, and is gorgeously photographed, preferable to turn the sound down and the subtitles off and watch the moving pictures.  

Malice in Wonderland (2009)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 5.8 by 3,400 cinematizens.

Genre: Fantasy; Species: Alice.

DNA: Geordie.

Verdict: It’s all about time.  

Tagline:  Go girl! 

Late at night the amnesiac Alice hitches a ride in Whitey’s (who is late, late) black London cab and nothing is quite the same again.  In a series of skits she and he meet contemporary updates of the Mad Hatter, Tweedlee and (very) -dum(b), Caterpillarman, Dormouse, The Cheshire Cat, The Walrus, and, of course, the Red Queen.  A few genders are bent along the way.

Alice moves things along by ingesting every illegal substance these creatures purvey in the struggle to regain her memory. She is the missing daughter of zillionaire Lewis Dodgson who offers a colossal reward for her return, and that lucre sets off even more scoundrels in pursuit to relieve Whitey of this fare.  

Fun follows. Lots of it. 

***

It makes no sense but it is a mile-a-minute with some engaging players like the Gardening Girl in the looking glass. Alice ends where she began and there is a charming resolution.

It seems there is species of Alice films.  All manner of them from Disney to anti-Disney from the silent era to today in many languages.  One review lists 33 without any claim to being comprehensive.  By the way, this title has also had many iterations.

Star Wreck in the Pirkinning (2005) 

IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 43m, rated 6.5 by 6,000 cinemtizens.  

DNA: Finland.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: A parody with laughs.

Tagline: ‘Deploy Windows 95!’  

Travelling by accident from the far future back to the 21st Century Earth, no one believes Captain when says he is from the distant future.  He’ll show them!  He sets about conquering Earth so he can save it from destruction.  Yes, he is a megalomaniac.  

When the going gets tough, the tough use the ultimate weapon: Windows 95!  It will destroy anything! 

***

This is a fan mash up of Star Trek, and it worked well enough to keep me watching.  There are others segments of different lengths. Click on.