Country: France
Genre: Action
Director: Fred Cavayé
Year: 2010

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Point Blank AKA A Bout Portant is a thriller about absolutely nothing. By that I mean that there’s no sociopolitical or psychological subtext whatsoever. What you see is what you get.

That said, Point Blank is almost perfectly realized. Director Fred Cavayé makes it look natural and easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it. Let’s see what Cavayé accomplishes:

Our heroes, Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) and Nadia (Elena Anaya) are sketched at lightning speed and with precise economy, just enough that you like them and will care what happens to them. When the plot kicks in, the action and plot developments are nonstop. The script by Fred Cavayé and Guillaume Lemans is the closest you’ll ever get to a perpetual motion machine. And yet, despite the highly stylized and artificial storytelling, nothing rings false. The characterization shortcuts only read that way if you’re a critic. Casual viewers wouldn’t detect the manipulation. The camera work is subjective, which increases the power of the action scenes, but never in such a way as to call attention to itself. The choreography of the action scenes is expertly planned and performed. The violence is nasty and brutal, but never feels gratuitous. Every single performance is terrific.

On a craft level, Point Blank is damned near flawless.

So, why am I not giving Point Blank five stars?

Well, as good as Point Blank is, it’s awfully shallow. Yes, it’s exciting and suspenseful, but there’s not a whole lot there. It’s a pure action suspense picture, meant to be consumed in the theater with copious amounts of popcorn and forgotten as soon as the lights are turned up. There’s no resonance in the story to speak of.

The story?

When the very pregnant Nadia is kidnapped, male nurse Samuel has only three hours to break injured criminal Hugo (Roschdy Zem), who is being guarded by police, out of the hospital, or his wife will be killed. I’m not going to tell you anymore than that because the plot developments that follow are pretty much the whole picture.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Japanese cinema of the 60s and 70s and Hong Kong cinema of the 80s and 90s, but I expect more than that from a thriller. Point Blank is like a meal consisting of French fries and apple pie — tasty, to be sure, but not very nourishing.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Romance/ Drama
Director: Sherman Wong
Year: 1993

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

Enigma Of Love is that rarest of beasts, an excellent Hong Kong flick that doesn’t rely on action to make it’s point.

When Jackie’s (Jacky Cheung) gigolo bar is busted by tough cop Tammy (Maggie Cheung), he decides to humiliate her by making her fall in love with him. I don’t think I’m giving too much away when I say that Jackie ends up falling in love with her, which leaves him with a lot of explaining to do.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s colleague David (Wilson Lam), who has been ignoring her up to now, develops an interest in her once he finds out that she’s falling in love with someone else.

This all culminates in an intense scene that has Maggie handcuffed to a car door while a drunk David threatens and abuses Jackie with a cocked revolver.

Now, I know that it doesn’t sound like much, but this is a good example of an execution dependent movie.

The first thing that’s necessary to make it work is a really tight script, in this case by Law Gam-Fai. The dialog is beautifully written and the plot mechanics are first rate. The psychology makes sense, which it had better if we are going to believe that a gigolo could really seduce a tough as nails cop. Instead of flattering and trying to buy Tammy’s love (which would never work), Jackie makes himself a mystery. Then he turns out to be artistic and in need of help. No Asian woman could possibly resist such a combination. Then and only then does Jackie start pouring on the charm and lavishing gifts on Maggie.

Jacky Cheung is spellbinding as Jackie. I never doubted for a minute that he could bullshit women into buying just about anything he wanted them to. And when he fell hard for Tammy, I wound up believing that, too. Maggie Cheung, on the other hand, is irresistible. Any guy would fall in love with her. She’s convincing in her few action scenes, too. (Credit that to the fearless Maggie, some clever stunt doubling, an unnamed action coordinator, and director Sherman Wong. In fact, what little action there is in Enigma Of Love is hard hitting in the typical Golden Age of Hong Kong style. There is scene involving a runaway wheelchair and a cliff that simply kicks ass.)

Best of all, Jacky Cheung and Maggie Cheung have great chemistry together.

As David, Wilson Lam is terrific as the type of guy who doesn’t want a woman unless she isn’t available.

The comedic elements, which mostly involve the bickering of Kwai Fa-Pon (Maria Cordero) and Cat (Lam Yee-Kei), are amusing, too.

In fact, every single element of Enigma Of Love works, both separately, and together to create a superior entertainment.

If you’ve seen most of the great Hong Kong action flicks out there and you’re ready to widen your appreciation of Hong Kong cinema of the 80s and 90s, Enigma Of Love would be a good place to start.

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Country: Japan
Genre: Action/ Pinku Eiga/ Swordplay/ Martial Arts
Director: Takashi Tsuboshima
Year: 1974

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Sometimes I can be slow on the uptake. Only now do I realize that some of my very favorite Japanese movies originated from the warped pen of Kazuo Koike. There’s Lady Snowblood, Hanzo The Razor, Lone Wolf & Cub, and now Demon Spies.

You see, the Shogun is kidnapping or buying children and training them to be the ultimate assassins. The training is brutal. How brutal? Out of 15 children, only 5 survive the training.

I don’t want to reveal all the depravity involved in the training, but suffice it to say that the first 30 minutes of Demon Spies are a nonstop parade of atrocities, spiked with sexual violence and geysers of blood.

Good times!

Demon Spies is all set to be a classic of its kind, but director Takashi Tsuboshima allows the movie to become too static halfway through the second act.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what the purpose of the Demon Spies is. Well, the youngsters are told that their purpose is to keep peace in Japan by preventing insurrections. I don’t want to tell you any more than that because the wicked plot twists and general aura of depravity are all that Demon Spies really has to offer.

Unlike Lone Wolf & Cub, for example, the filmmakers don’t bother showing us details of daily life in the Edo period or the beauty of rural Japan. The music score by Masaru Satô is entertaining enough, but lacks the richness of the Lone Wolf & Cub soundtracks, with their daft mixture of funk, rock, and traditional music cues.

The acting is at the usual high level for a Japanese production of this period, but nothing to knock your socks off.

Same goes for the swordplay, although there is plenty of arterial spurting and lopping off of limbs to compensate.

So who would appreciate this movie?

Demon Spies is really targeted towards folks who enjoy seeing sacred cows sliced, diced and eviscerated. It’s truly cynical and twisted, but other than that, there really wasn’t much point to it that I could see.

Unlike Battle Royale, which was about how the old eat their young, Demon Spies is content to merely abuse it’s young protagonists for our entertainment.

Well, I suppose there’s something in there about how soldiers are asked to make inhuman sacrifices for the powerful, all the time while they’re being lied to and manipulated, but the filmmakers prefer to dwell on the suffering of their young protagonists.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Demon Spies isn’t deep, but it sure is fun.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Comedy
Director: Alex Cheung
Year: 1988

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

The opening images of Chatter Street Killer are of modern skyscrapers in Hong Kong: gleaming, cold, impersonal. Then the camera pans down. At street level, the working class is still living in old Hong Kong neighborhoods that feel more like small towns. Everyone knows everyone else. No one has a lot of money, but people are still neighborly enough to watch out for one another. In fact, folks are downright nosy, always in each others business.

One day, the neighbors witness an argument in the building across the street. The lights go out in the apartment, followed by a gunshot. Immediately, the nosy neighbors assume that a murder has been committed and call the police. Inspector Lo Yau-Dai (Cheung Kwok-Keung) is sent to investigate.

Plenty of misunderstandings and comic slapstick ensue.

The script by Chak Ming is broad but eventful and director Alex Cheung moves the proceedings along with the brisk energy characteristic of the Golden Age of Hong Kong.

Even though there isn’t an action choreographer credited for Chatter Street Killer, the fights and action scenes are performed with plenty of spirit and are cunningly edited.

Some of the slapstick was quite funny, especially a bit involving a snake, a hysterical female, and a pair of garden shears.

I also appreciated that Chak Ming’s script was well thought out. All the elements of the script work together. There really isn’t anything extraneous.

Chatter Street Killer is certainly no masterpiece, but it makes for an entertaining 90 minutes.

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Country: Italy
Genre: Spaghetti Western
Director: Sergio Sollima
Year: 1966

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

The Big Gundown has the reputation of being one of the very best spaghetti Westerns. It turns out that reputation is well earned.

The story seems simple enough at first. Cuchillo (Tomas Milian) is wanted for raping and murdering an 11 year old girl. Bounty hunter Jonathan Corbett (Lee Van Cleef) is sent after him by Brokston (Walter Barnes), a kingmaker who promises to make Corbett a Senator if he captures Cuchillo.

Even on the basis of this seemingly straightforward plot, the script by Sergio Donati, Sergio Sollima, Tulio Demicheli, Fernando Morandi, and Franco Solinas (incredibly, the screenplay plays like a unified vision instead of of mass confusion by committee) is superb. The dialog is cutting. The episodes, in which Cuchillo manages to evade Corbett time and time again, are witty and diverse.

Gradually, the screenplay starts to broaden and deepen. The writers ask us, “When does the pursuit of justice become vengeance?” and “How aggressively can you pursue law breakers before you become lawless yourself?” Sadly, these questions are more relevant than ever since the planes flew into the two towers. I’m thinking of extraordinary rendition and Bin Laden’s summary execution in Pakistan.

Not content with that, the writers start to question who the law serves. It is citizens in general or is the law a tool to be used by the wealthy to retain power and money by force?

I might be giving the impression that The Big Gundown is blatantly political but that is the opposite of the truth. The filmmakers bring up those questions in the process of making a ripsnorting Western. The script is incredibly economical. Not a word is wasted or unnecessary. No speechifying here.

Director Sergio Sollima, perhaps aware of what a great script he had, does a terrific job, too. The pacing is even. The action scenes have snap. The fights register as real fights in a time when fight choreography was at a very primitive stage. Sollima makes sure that when someone gets hit in the face or flattened by a charging bull, that they have the appropriate cuts and scrapes to show for it. And Sollima directs the actors well, too. There’s not a weak performance in the bunch.

The standout is clearly Tomas Milian as Cuchillo. The character is wily, underhanded, and a rascal. Milian makes him fully three dimensional and indecently entertaining. Lee Van Cleef gives some edge to Corbett. We understand how he could easily go to the dark side, the way Dick Cheney urged us to do in the aftermath of 911. Finally, Walter Barnes captures the slickness of a man of privilege, then and now.

The Big Gundown manages to give us an exciting, dramatic Western that is thoughtful as well. It all adds up to grand entertainment. Bravissimo!

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Comedy
Director: Yuen Biao
Year: 1992

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

A Kid From Tibet starts off with several advantages. First, there aren’t many movies made in which one of the main protagonists is a Tibetan monk. That’s pretty novel to start with. And director/star Yuen Biao managed to get amazing access to Lhasa, the holy city of Tibet where the Dalai Lama resides. So we get to see street scenes in Lhasa, inside the temples, and some of the natural beauty of the area.

The story is simplicity itself. According to the movie, Tibetan Buddhism used to be divided into five sects. One of the sects, the Black Sect, wanted to use the supernatural powers of Tibetan Buddhism to conquer Tibet. The peace loving sect used the powers of a magic gold bottle to expel the Black Sect from Tibet. The gold bottle is missing, but the Dalai Lama still has the cap to the bottle. The Dalai Lama sends Lo Ba Wong La (Yuen Biao) to reuinite the cap with the gold bottle, which is in the possession of a collector in Hong Kong, and ultimately bring the bottle and cap back to Lhasa, where it belongs. That’s pretty much it. Everything else is simply a complication.

Surprisingly, that’s enough, but the filmmakers make a few mistakes. One is to make the female lead character, Chiu Seng Neng (Michelle Reis) totally unlikeable. She’s a ninny, unfair, and horribly selfish. Chiu Seng Neng accompanies Lo Ba Wong La on his way to Hong Kong. Over and over, Lo Ba Wong La saves her ass, and all she does is bitch and moan. This gets old fast.

For many viewers, another problem will be a scene late in the story that rips off the ending from Raiders of the Lost Ark, except with far inferior special effects. In those days, there was no CGI in Hong Kong films. Often, the filmmakers painted special effects directly on the negatives! Personally, I find the primitive hand-crafted effects charming, but not everyone will agree.

The last error is kind of inexcusable. In the opening scene of the film, Lawyer Robinson (Roy Chiao) is being driven to Lhasa in a jeep. All during this scene, director Yuen Biao cuts between medium shots of Robinson in the jeep and panoramic views of the Tibetan countryside. He employs the standard strategy of maintaining continuity of the soundtrack. In other words, even though you might be hundreds of yards away from the jeep, you hear the dialog and the sound of the jeep as though they were only feet away. Then, unaccountably, in a cut to the panoramic view, you get dead air. This is sound editing 101, folks. I don’t care how low the budget was, there’s no excuse for such sloppiness. It takes you right out of the picture.

Fortunately, A Kid From Tibet has some major strengths. Screenwriters Barry Wong, Sam Chi-Leung, and Chan Ka-Cheong come up with reasonably entertaining variations on the fish out of water concept.

In one scene, Lo Ba Wong La is asked by Lawyer Robinson to perform Tibetan magic at a party. He reluctantly does so but a practitioner of the Black Sect surreptitiously screws up his tricks in order to embarrass Lo Ba Wong La.

As I already mentioned, the treatment of the Buddhist elements in the story is entertaining in and of itself.

Other than Michelle Reis (not really her fault her character is such a pill), the other actors are entertaining in their roles. Yuen Biao makes a fine Tibetan monk. He’s humble and clueless about the culture outside of Llasa, but he’s no fool. As the chief villain, Yuen Wah is wonderful as usual. And Nina Li is fine as Wah’s sister.

But best of all are the many martial arts battles, courtesy of choreographers Yuen Biao and Ka Lee. They’re creative and kick ass. Yuen Biao directs these contests with flair and drive.

Taking all these factors together, A Kid From Tibet may not be a classic, but it’s still a lot of fun.

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Country: Japan
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Swordplay/ Martial Arts
Director: Kazuo Ikehiro
Year: 1964

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Considering how simple the central conflict of Zatoichi And The Chest Of Gold is, the film can be awfully confusing.

When Zatoichi (Shintarô Katsu) happens upon a celebration, it turns out that the villagers are happy because they have managed to scrape together the 1000 ryo tax they owe the local tax collector, despite the fact that for the last three years, their crops have been devastated by drought.

While on the way to the tax collector with their payment, the farmers are attacked by two different groups of swordsmen, many of the peasants are killed, and the money stolen. Zatoichi is seen with the money by one of the villagers, and he becomes the chief suspect, along with Chuji, a local bandit who has been protecting the farmers up until now.

The only way for Zatoichi to clear his name is to recover the money.

Who stole the money? Did the thieves have prior knowledge that the tax payment was being transported along the road? Why were there two groups of swordsmen attacking the farmers?

Initially, it’s quite confusing. You have no idea who the attackers are.

Director Kazuo Ikehiro also makes some bizarre elisions in the storytelling. For example, after some would be thieves lose control of the money chest and it tumbles down a hill, they find Zatoichi sitting on it. When they attack him, most of the thieves are cut to ribbons. All of this is witnessed by a villager. In the very next scene, the villagers are accusing Zatoichi of stealing the tax payment.

What happened after Zatoichi was attacked? Did Zatoichi wander off? Who picked up the gold, the remnant of the swordsmen who attacked Zatoichi or someone else?

Eventually, we can figure out who did what by a process of elimination, but it’s an odd way to tell a story. Kazuo Ikehiro does this kind of thing often, which leaves the reader struggling to comprehend what’s going on, rather than being caught up in the drama.

But this isn’t to say that Zatoichi And The Chest Of Gold isn’t any good. As always, Zatoichi is a wonderful character. The villagers are a distinctive lot. The villains are top notch as usual.

The swordplay in the Zatoichi series has now settled down to be elegant and ferocious at the same time. There is even a little gore thrown in. The great Tomisaburo Wakayama shows up and is just as impressive as his brother, Shintarô Katsu.

As is often the case in the Zatoichi movies, there are poetic moments, like when Zatoichi runs into rope strung through the forest hung with elaborate bells. I also enjoyed a speech given by Tomisaburo Wakayama in which he compares Zatoichi to a worm.

Poor Zatoichi! He’s the Rodney Dangerfield of swordsmen.

The characterizations and psychology are never less than intelligent and thought provoking. For example, screenwriters Shozaburo Asai and Akikazu Ota refuse to sentimentalize the villager peasants as salt of the earth types. Even when Zatoichi refuses to flee and offers to find the thieves who stole their tax payment and return the money, the farmers are ready to lynch him. The writers are smart enough to know that people can become frantic with anxiety under sustained and inhuman pressure, which can affect group behavior in extremely ugly ways.

In short, in most respects, Zatoichi And The Chest Of Gold maintains the usual high standards of the series, with the only caveat being some less than smooth storytelling this time around.

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Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Comedy
Director: Kenny Bee
Year: 1986

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

One year before Danny Devito’s Throw Momma From The Train, screenwriter Alex Law came up with this comic version of the classic Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller Strangers On A Train.

In this version of the story, Football Fa (Chow Yun-Fat) and Roberto (Kenny Bee) are friends who drunkenly agree to kill each other’s wives. You see, Fa thinks his wife Wang Hsiao Hsien (Joey Wong) is cheating on him with the team doctor, while Roberto is simply henpecked by his wife Anita (the great Anita Mui).

Not much of a reason to be sure, but in the context of a screwball comedy, I bought it. Why?

Because Asian men are spoiled to death by their wives. If anything is less than perfect, they think it’s a tragedy. On the other hand, Asian women will forgive their men pretty much anything (with the exception of infidelity).

100 Ways To Murder Your Wife may be hugely exaggerated, but it stems from observable truth. That’s one reason that it’s funny. Another reason is that the filmmakers know that Football Fa and Roberto are complete tools. They spend the film hoisting Fa and Roberto on their own petards instead of indulging in the usual misogynistic pokes at women.

100 Ways To Murder Your Wife is blessed with two capable comic performers: Chow Yun-Fat and Anita Mui. Chow Yun-Fat mugs and preens like crazy, but it’s an extension of a recognizable character, and after all, he’s not supposed to be the hero. This is in contrast to early Stephen Chow nonsense comedies, in which he invariably played a pig-ignorant, selfish asshole, and was the audience identification character for callow young men in the audience.

Anita Mui once again proves herself to be an inspired clown. Check out the scene where she’s trying to kill a rooster with a butcher knife. Or my favorite scene in which she tells off her husband via a videotape.

Lastly, 100 Ways To Murder Your Wife has the manic energy typical of Hong Kong films from the late 80s. The pacing reminds me of Bringing Up Baby without the sophistication.

The film climaxes in a delirious comic set piece involving numerous booby traps the men have set to off Fa’s wife, including an improvised guillotine, a television set next to a pool, and some hungry piranhas.

100 Ways To Murder Your Wife is hardly perfect. There’s a fair amount of vamping. But I would be lying if I told you I didn’t laugh.

If the filmmakers had relied solely on dialog and situations, 100 Ways To Murder Your Wife wouldn’t have enough oomph to sustain interest, but fortunately, there is enough inspired slapstick to carry the film over the dull spots.

100 Ways To Murder Your Wife is one of the rare pure comedies (not enlivened with stunts and kungfu, that is) from the Golden Age of Hong Kong (1985-1995) that works. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s worth a rental, especially for fans of Anita Mui and Chow Yun-Fat.

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Country: Japan
Genre: Action/ Martial Arts/ Comedy
Director: Yukio Noda
Year: 1970

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars


NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Okay, you’ve got machine gun slaughters, drug wars, boat chases, death by spear gun, explosions galore, car chases, and much more. And yet, Yakuza Deka: The Assassin is pretty darned boring.

How can that be?

Let’s start with the action elements. None of them is the slightest bit convincing. The fight scenes are no great shakes. The gun battles have no logic to speak of. The climactic boat/helicopter chase is downright insulting. The bad guys are shooting at Hayata (Sonny Chiba) with pistols and machine guns as he dangles from a helicopter, at a distance of only 30 feet, but somehow they always miss.

Then there’s the supposed comedy, none of it the slightest bit funny.

The plot is just tossed off, like it was written on cocktail napkins at a hostess bar.

The music is bland 70s cop stuff, not nearly as fun as the scores from the Lone Wolf & Cub series.

With filmmaking this piss poor, there’s nothing much Sonny Chiba can do to save the film.

Some people might enjoy Yakuza Deka: The Assassin precisely because it is so goofy and cheesy. Those folks will love the flashy polyester pimp costumes the gangsters wear in the film. There’s also a psychedelic pot party to make fun of, if that’s your bag.

Basically, unless you’re into camp, there’s nothing much to recommend Yakuza Deka: The Assassin. Imminently skippable.

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Country: Holland
Genre: Comedy
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Year: 1971

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

It’s amazing to think that with his first film, Paul Verhoeven’s essential characteristics as a filmmaker (and those of his main screenwriter over the years, Gerard Soeteman) were already in evidence.

Business Is Business is punchy. The tone is frank (some would say vulgar). Verhoeven and Soeteman get straight to the point. The filmmakers go out of their way to be nonjudgmental. Even back then, Verhoeven’s action scenes were zestfully performed and edited. The film is brightly lit, even cheery. And as always, Verhoeven’s manic energy pushes the film along. Even now, 40 years later, the pacing seems brisk.

Business Is Business concerns the daily work and personal lives of Greet (Ronnie Bierman) and Nel (Sylvia de Leur), two hookers that live in the same building. We observe them as they entertain various clients. They actually do very little vanilla sex. Most of their clients are fetishists of one kind or another. These scenes are very funny.

Although the social condemnation of prostitution is not as heavy as in the United States (it’s legal in Holland), still the girls are looked down on. And business may be business, but the prostitutes are human beings. They fall in love, get pregnant and so on.

The filmmakers make no bones about the low class of their subjects. Unlike movies made about prostitution in the United States, the filmmakers don’t cast their film with airbrushed models. These women look coarse and used. But even though Verhoeven might be honest in his depiction, neither is he cruel. He has compassion both for the women and their clients.

Business Is Business is a remarkably pleasant movie about the business of prostitution and the people who work in it. For those who appreciate Paul Verhoeven’s films (not the thumpingly obvious Showgirls and Basic Instinct but rather Starship Troopers, Black Book, Robocop, Total Recall, Spetters, The 4th Man, Soldier Of Orange, and Flesh+Blood), I heartily recommend checking out the film with which he started his career.

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