Anatomia Extinction (1995)

 

Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura

Screenplay: Yoshihiro Nishimura

Cast: Kisei Ishizuka as The Man; Jun Sasaki as The Engineer in Subway; Chikako Tone as The Man's Girlfriend; Tomoko Haseyama as The BCG News Anchorwoman

Archival Review

[Author's Note: Almost good enough to have published, this was unfortunately just lost along the way in my writings. Reading this review to publish does entice me to want to revisit Anatomia Extinction. Once an obscure title, an American company Error4444 had a limited edition Blu Ray released in 2021, so people are more aware of this production. Tokyo Gore Police (2009) is one that needs to be returned to as well, as whilst my views here have not really changed at all with my issues with later mid-2000s onwards films from the likes of Sushi Typhoon, as discussed in the review, there is an interest in seeing if my views change a little. Like other archival reviews, the review has been tidied up and even re-written in terms of grammar, but none of the content has been removed or altered from when it was written, even if my tone and views have changed in places.]

 

If there is a fascinating comparison to be made between two different eras, Yoshihiro Nishimura's same premise - where in a bleak futuristic Japan, a figure wanders it turning people into bio-mutants - between the more well known Tokyo Gore Police (2008) and Anatomia Extinction from the decade later is a great example. Anatomia Extinction is superior, as much because, under the Sushi Typhoon label, Nishimura's feature length version has an erratic, frankly tedious third act of mindless practical gore with no cause to truly cheer. Anatomia Extinction has the virtue, beyond only fifty minutes in length that before you shot in warehouses and stages, within the vibrant indie filmmaking era of Japan, Nishimura had to shoot this sci-fi/body horror/splatter work in actual streets and subways stations.

The world, ironically, is more fleshed out and elaborated on here than in Tokyo Gore Police. The later feature film tried to show itself as a fully fleshed world through RoboCop inspired fake advertisements, but with sparse sets with few people. Here, likely stealing shots in the street, the crowds of bystanders going about in their daily lives stands out, as is real night time locations and dark subway corridors. It's ordinary life is fleshed out, like nineties Japan but with the details tantalisingly shown - one, ran with in Tokyo Gore Police of a privatised police force which is merely hinted at in radio and audio, the second which adds so much more here in that there is an overpopulation issue and a string of inexplicable massacres, even of children, constantly taking place. The later makes the mutants in Anatomia Extinction have a reason to exist, that they are creations of a cult wishing (horrifically) to cull the populous by creating monsters.

The work, not very long and as much a practical effects demo, still has this as a simplistic plot where one person finds himself drawn to this cult out of chance, which becomes grotesque and as freakish as you would expect, what with a loved one in a sewer left limbless yet in orgasmic ecstasy and a mutant frenzy that even references Death Race 2000 (1975). Some of it is darkly humorous in a sick way, all with icky and immensely accomplished practical effects, but never distasteful. Knowing Japanese pulp cinema has a gross underbelly I wish never to encounter, there is thankfully as a balance this era of transgressive pulp which yet has a higher bar of creativity and for intelligence. In an era which coined the term of Japanese cyberpunk, whilst not of the genre, there is an intense atmosphere here of claustrophobic crowded streets, tiny moodily lit rooms and a hell of a lot of primal bold colour lighting. Yes, there is CGI visually equivalent to a Playstation One cut scene, starting the film off no less, but as someone who likes dated CGI, that just added to the material.

There is also, in vast contrast to many genre films from the West, a greater sense of being able to tell the stories through aesthetic and mood even in a gory work like this. There is always a danger of exoticising Japanese culture but, whilst a lot of sluggishness and emphasis on conventions is found in Western genre films, there is (even with clichés) a greater emphasis on mood and a gut "visceral" experience, a lot of Anatomia Extinction atmospheric or, picking up the pace such as a midnight hit-and-run escapade, with a sudden volt of energy inbetween.

At this point it is worth saying I had softened to Tokyo Gore Police more but the ending, a mess of randomness, spoilt it alongside the noticeable sense of being shot within a limited environment or available locations rather than ordinary places. Anatomia Extinction still has a pace, an ebb and flow of progression where the latter film did not, alongside a huge factor that there was no irony in the text at all. Instead, the short version has an incredibly grim sense of world building, a sense of constant congestion and melancholy, over ripened within this world to the point people go mad and kill crazy. There is of course the body horror, which was more elaborated in the 2009 film, but here in its limitations it is still appropriate, as arms lost can merely be grown back as guns, and everything (including how mutants are created) having a nightmarish quality. A lot of the problem with Tokyo Gore Police, and these later films aware with targeting Western audiences, was that shot in bright crisp digital camera and all about the spectacle, many of the virtues of mood and the grotesque materials building to the tone, rather than for itself, was lost.

Summer Lake Massacre (2018)

Originally Massacre at Pine Lake

Director: Andre Madness

Screenplay: T.H. Robb

Cast: Alexis Ford, Andy San Dimas, Briana Blair, Mr. Pete, Ralph Long, Rocco Reed, D. Snoop, Steve Crest and Lee Stone

Archive Review

 

It is shameless, to be honest, to include a Letterboxd review, but with this not a film easy to find. I wish to nonetheless preserve this existence of this weird curiosity, effectively "porn without porn", a slasher porn film from Adam and Eve productions with all the hardcore sex cut out to leave a forty or so minute slasher film. The edited version was briefly on Amazon Prime in the United Kingdom, the review originating from February 15th 2019, but is long gone.

The porn version, part of Grindhouse XXX (2011), a neo-grindhouse porn double bill from when the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez film Grindhouse (2007) led to a exploitation film pastiche movement, is available. It is a film that would be fascinating to return to, in the cut version or not, even if I honestly think it would not grow and improve in entertainment. I think the greater disappointment is not the lack of desire to track this down but that the review has a negative tone I jettisoned from my work, where the most negative I can get (for the most part) is when I have little to say. When you debate whether to track down and pay for titles you take a risk for, the risk needs to be for something idiosyncratic and weird, and I do not have high hopes from this review this was ever going to stand out even with the hardcore sex.

Grammar has been corrected, if need be, alongside anything to improve the quality of presentation and turn of phrase even if words were changed or removed. Nothing in the review's content has been altered and when need be, any additional notes would have been included as time has passed and thoughts came to me returning to this review. The Letterboxd review was originally written around a work covered from a user called Scumbalina, from her list "Neon Boogers", an ode to "candy colored quivering frontal lobe aberrations on humanity". That list provided a couple of films that, if I have not written about already, would wish to. Even for this negative older review, this is a positive for anyone reading this to look into.

 

[Some Plot Spoilers]

So yes, Summer Lake Massacre was originally a porn-slasher hybrid created by Adam & Eve Pictures called Massacre at Pine Lake. I was initially hesitant to review censored version of the film, only to find that the Summer Lake Massacre version does have its own IMDB page¹. As much as we view this as a pretty liberal era when it comes to hardcore porn, it's still a common occurrence that "softcore" versions edited from the initial origins of films are still a practice, a segregation from the mainstream where that's still a viable method of gaining a wider audience. This suggests that the desire to break through a perceived moral barrier as was desired by the seventies filmmakers, some of which thought they were making art, is still an issue and far from over.

The one only redeeming aspect, if in a perverse way, about Summer Lake Massacre is its aesthetic. The brightly coloured clothes are the kind equivalent to all the pastel colours and nineties neon from the basement of exaggerated, gaudy pop culture. And let us be honest, as many of you the readers have probably have seen one modern porn clip in your lives once, there is the strange detail of how modern porn, in need of a location to shoot in and usually shot on digital cameras, always have the brightly coloured and lightly decorated environments you might find in a furniture catalogue. One slight touch up in the lighting and you get a Greek New Weird film aesthetic, and if you are bored of the sex, some people might find some greater interest admiring all the various ornaments and pictures in the background.

As for Summer Lake Massacre as a film, it is too short in the censored versions to be painful, but the problem is that it is a half arsed production. [Writer's Note: A crass choice of words, and viewpoint I would never use in future writing]. Even with the pornographic aspect, there were only three scenes visibly excised and they looked the most generic sort from what was left in fragments, cutting to a random lizard in another time zone for the first, but sadly never continuing with this unintentionally hilarious choice with a "boing" sound in the transition. Worse, with the awful makeup on the actresses, which does not compliment the plastic aesthetic that I can find charming, the film clearly prescribed the dumbest stereotype of the erotic which is cheesy and frankly dull, an argument for the virtues of softcore erotic actually being mere erotic as it did not spend all its time on boring real sex.

It is a testament to how bad any work is, regardless of genre, if its actresses are lit or dressed in a way that is embarrassing. In fact, if there is any virtue to having watched Summer Lake Massacre, it is an excuse to go on a long and protracted tangent about a severe gender politic issues about mainstream porn, about how it has always been about the exaggeration of sex (in actresses' literal physical shapes, even plastic surgery enhancement, let alone what it depicts) but in such a childish and frankly dull way. [Writer's Note: Now I have a more sympathetic view of female actresses in adult filmmaking. The aesthetic is bland is going to be the argument if you ever need to actually debate this rather than view the material as it was sold for, it we are going to be blunt.]

The debate of misogynistic gaze is not the issue I am thinking of, the one argued by people by Andrea Dworkin and for another conversation, but just how tired and un-erotic something like this (even without the sex) is compared to even a film like from Walerian Borowczyk or Jean Rollin, films which have even gotten defence from women because of both their aesthetic sensuality, but even for their depictions of women as sexual beings. Even really cheesy softcore which has a sense of fun, like the sixties sexploitation films, have more interest regardless of possibly dated attitudes. It is not surprising that the influx of women who are making pornography for themselves, in any media, are more adapt to it than most males in making far more rewarding (and frankly sexier) work as they care about things like aesthetic and emotions that make the work more rewarding, even erotic fan fiction. The kind of things Borowczyk, Rollin and a male creator who cared for such things who gained cult and even a female fan base from when they passed.

In fact whilst we are on this subject as its pertinent, one of the aspects which has always looked off putting in mainstream pornography for me personally, and is here in spades and among one of these issues of mainstream erotica, is that in vast contrast to the idolisation of the female stars, they always cast very generic men as if they were mere props and to allow male viewers to be stand-ins for, not considering that even a heterosexual male could appreciate a really attractive man onscreen even if they have no sexual desire for the same sex. As much as his reputation off-screen has been tarnished by real life scandal, there was a reason James Deen (not to be confused with the Hollywood star), became a cult figure with a huge female fan base as he was attractive and oozed charisma.

[Writer's Notes: The scandals with Deen from 2015 onwards do not paint a pleasant picture in the slightest of the man. To sidestep this to a more light hearted but pertinent comment to make, yes the like of aesthetic care for men in erotica in general is a strange and off-putting aspect. How ironic, even in the worst and least defensible erotic work you can have a hope that a female figure can still stand out above the muck around her, because of the strange paradoxical gaze that is objectifying yet can be subverted to make her stand out, against how the maze gaze really makes the male look grotesque in comparison.]

Back to the film itself, the slasher contingent would be disappointed with Summer Lake Massacre too as, even as someone who has a conflicted and strange relationship with the horror sub genre, this is pathetic next to even some I have found overrated and dull. It could lead to another long tangent, but I will rein it in, that for all my gripes about it, and dismissing some sacred cows, I have enough respect for the slasher genre that I am seeing a film like this one completely squander the premise in such a lazy way. Even some of the most notoriously bad (yet beloved) examples in the genre could stand proudly above this as Summer Lake Massacre barely gets the point of the tropes, baring allowing one to admire a well built horse stable the film is partially shot in. In fact, there are probably slasher films shot in someone's backyard that have better gore effects than this whilst we are at it, slashers as much as mere titillation requiring some actual enthusiasm to be of any interest.

This is all in mind that, with openness to any idea, I have no biases against porn and anyone who works in it, and no concept is potentially bad. There is the obvious, and somewhat weird, notion here that it is meant to turn a person on with real sex only to star killing off individuals, which I do not want to try to explain even in its butchered form. We could do without the black stereotype character either, even if the actor might have been in on the performance and (unlike other films) he manages to get away scot free to safety.

Putting all these concerns together, yes let us have more of this kind of gaudy colourful erotic genre weirdness, but please make something with some actual motivation next time. The initial result here is tedious and would not have stood out even with the sex kept back in.

 

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1) It does not when this archive review was preserved.

Out-of-Print: Random Thoughts on How the Availability of Films Is a Detriment to Film Criticism

 

The following is an old piece I did in 21st September 2010 for an older blog, and in hindsight upon finding it again, it is worthy to actually dig this out and readapt it to the modern times, ten years later, with new notes. Interesting, despite my tastes in cinema arguably becoming more open minded, I was on the ball. Also with the existence of streaming ten years later, these words develop an unexpected and chilling poignancy even if the physical media era has grown into a golden era.

Nothing has been changed baring tidying it up for presentation, but thankfully there were not many.

*****

 

[Note - These are only half-baked ideas of mine which may be inaccurate and lacking details, but I have been musing over for some time]

Films viewers, with only myself and others I've encountered through podcasts and the internet to use as examples, have a tendency to return to certain films months or years later, including ones they first hated to re-evaluate them

Film criticism, even raking films on IMDB, for me is not in stasis, but continually changing.

Films improve or become more flawed on multiple viewings

That is not to say you cannot have an opinion on them on only one viewing, that is what makes up many of the reviews on my blog, but that does not mean we cannot re-evaluate films at a later time¹.

Age and experience may alter our opinions, while theories and articles on films may offer new perspective (the fascinating ideas about Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) from the likes of the Film Quarterly magazine has caused the film to become better and better for me²)

One should even evaluate the films they had despised; I have considered re-watching films I have hated such as Tarantino's Death Proof (2007), Paul Haggis' Crash (2005) and Baise-Moi (2001) - the third holding the title of the worst film I've seen despite seeing some of the most poorly produced schlock in my few years of film fandom - with the possibility that my views may alter³.

However, the availability of films completely undermines this. Unavailability or out-of-print is a foul word for a film fan, but I argue it completely undermines the ability to give an opinion on film. It is one of many, such as poorly produced DVDs (poor subtitles or dub only) and censorship (i.e. how am I, as a British national, able to properly review the notorious A Serbian Film (2010)⁴ when not only has it had around 4 minutes cut out, but those few minutes could alter my opinion on the film instantly?)

As films – as TV shows, short films and other visual media – disappear into obscurity and become out-of-print on DVD, it causes many problems. Not only in that each one of them could have become a gem or a masterpiece to individuals if they could find them, but the difficulty of finding them makes it difficult to be able to re-evaluate and critique them⁵.

For me, the obscurer films and the reviews and thoughts on them are far more fascinating than any other. With a few exceptions – such as the work of David Lynch – I have little interest in the countless books and articles on (for example) Citizen Kane (1941) even if I hold it as a near masterpiece. It is also detrimental to analysis of films that have the potential of being an underappreciated masterpiece, unless its obscurity leads to a mystique that drives people to search for it.

It even affects films that exist in cannons. Orson Welles himself is highly regarded, but many would have had to wait for a cinema screening or the release of his films on DVD (F For Fake (1973) was only released in the UK on DVD in 2007), and that does not take into account the ones that are completely unavailable such as Chimes At Midnight (1965). In the USA, as I write, you cannot even get The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) unless you import it from out the country. Another example is Jacques Rivette epic length Out 1 (1971). It has been show in cinema screenings at its full length, and through the internet one can find it through bit torrent, but there is still the fact that it is difficult to see it, despite being one of Rivette’s most acclaimed works, let alone watch it multiple times to see if one has any new thoughts about it. This also does not take into account films of lesser known directors, periods, and of countries and continents such as Africa⁶.

 

While we live in age where the internet gives us access (sometimes illegally) to these films and there are many ways to see lesser known works, they also can be a hindrance to being able to judge films with consideration especially in an environment of rapid consumption⁷.

 

*******

Notes from 2020:

1) Famously, Pauline Kael did not rewatch films as a critic. The issue I have found, however, is that even a film or work you are familiar with can suddenly develop new layers or even metamorphose as memory fades or you change as a person.

2) Unfortunately have no knowledge of what these articles were, but inevitably, I will look into them one day if I decided to cover that film.

3) As of December 2020, I have yet to return to Death Proof, but Grindhouse (2007), the project that film was originally part of, was finally made available as intended in the United Kingdom and was a fascinating piece. I have yet to return to Crash, somewhat dreading it truthfully. Baise-Moi is no longer the worst film I have ever seen, but a complicated yet admirable work which is very difficult to digest with understandable reasons. Baise-Moi is, as a result of this piece, a film to definitely return to with interest for me.

4) By 2020, I have yet to watch A Serbian Film in any form, partially because of this but also, honestly, my complete disinterest in the film in its reputation and notoriety.

5) This is becoming more poignant as I used my blog writing to do the equivalent of crate diving for music connosiors, skimming for obscure DVDs on the only existing rental companies or, with a lot, online as much is still unavailable to see. As with the VHS era, a lot will be lost in the standard DVD years only to be recovered a decade later at this rate, and a lot will possibly be lost to time unless you have people preserving it on future YouTubes. Streaming titles, not released on physical media, are in an even more precarious place ironically due to their lack of tangibility, despite it being meant to help democratise their availability, because the rights to titles are limited time and streaming sites like Quibi crumble to dust within even less than a year.  

6) Those Orson Welles titles are more freely available by 2020, mostly through Criterion, but that is not to say there are ultra-obscurities left in his career (including some due to legal reasons that are unavailable). Rivette's Out 1 has been made available to see, but there are many titles of his still in obscurities. The lack of African cinema, the continent let alone individual countries, is still an embarrassment sadly

7) The final note, the conclusion to this act of effectively re-reading my old work, revisiting an old title to see what has changed like a film rather than disposing of it, is beating a dead horse about that we need to treat films especially in physical media with more respect in its necessity. Truthfully though the bigger worth to revisiting this is that, like here, to revisit even the worst in culture again may reveal new angles to gain meaning from. My younger self, who likely had an inferior taste in cinema back than as I changed so much over these ten years, was at least with opinions I would agree with ten years later.

The Fall (2019)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Screenplay: Jonathan Glazer

Archive Review

[A review left unfinished earlier this year, it qualifies as an archival piece because it did not include any references to whether it qualified for the Abstract Rating or not. Also as a very short review of a short, I wonder if it had been sufficiently detailed enough, even with the additional context added now later, to be a good review or not. For the sake of appreciating Jonathan Glazer's work however, I have provided the review nonetheless.]

 

After making Under the Skin (2013) - his startling sci-fi film which combined the unnatural, Scarlett Johansson in a brave role as an alien temptress, and the banality of Scottish urban environments, where Johansson is inexplicably in a film where you have buses, beans on toast and even Greggs sandwich shops onscreen - Glazer sadly vanished throughout the rest of the 2010s. In general, in he has been elusive to film making in general, but especially in the theatrical field as he has only made three feature length films between 2000 and 2013. But then the director who made his name with music videos for the likes of Radiohead suddenly dropped a project on BBC Two one night, when this ominous short suddenly was shown after an episode of The Americas with Simon Reeve on the unsuspecting public on 27 October 2019.

It is so short, The Fall is like a fragment of a nightmare rather than a production you can easily discuss in greater detail. One of the influences was a snapshot of Eric and Donald Trump Jr on a big-game hunting jaunt, holding a dead leopard they had shot, and it is not a surprise to see this as what it literally says on the surface without need for deeper detail, that of a mob who are trying to get a terrified man out of a tree at night in the middle of the woods. They do, taking a picture having pounced on him like prey, like an animal captured or killed at a big game hunt, only to proceed to hang him. The hanging, which evokes actual lynchings without any attempt to neuter the iconography, does take an odd turn when there is not only a drop in the middle of the woods, but that it is endless downwards for the victim.

Prominently the cast wears masks, ornate and carved, evoking for me Japanese theatre. They are startling in obscuring emotion in the mob and the victim, with their fixed feature and the strong emotions to them. The symbolism beyond the obvious is so minimal, like a dream, it would be absurd to spin a political slant baring the fact that, in its presentation and tone, it is inherently scary to witness. Anything beyond comparing this imagery to real life commentary would obscure inherently potent imagery which is political in its universal simplicity. Glazer for an interview with the Guardian website went as far as talk about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the likelihood of this happening again¹, and mob mentality is an aspect of humanity, in any context, which is still a dark side of us as a species. That there is a lynching, alongside the comparison to hunting a person down like an animal, itself is as frightening as an image because people have sadly become victims of this.

The film, shown on BBC2 without opening and ending credits, has a strange nature to it which is compelling. All set at night, with the quiet coda that, managing to stop himself on the way down, we leave with our victim with a leg each side of what is an endless well climbing up slowly, hopefully a victim who has survived unscathed. Mica Levi, an indie musician who stormed cinema composition with her music for Under the Skin, gives The Fall something evocative and minimal to adding to the tone. The result, alongside its intention and clever screening tactic, causes one hope that Grazer produces more work soon as he has still firing on all cylinders. 

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1) Source HERE.

[Archive]: The Plagiarists (2019)

One project I had considered writing for this month was ranking all the films and ephemera I saw in March 2020. This was doomed due to how long it was taking and that with some exceptions I want to move away from lists. They take too long and, unless it's the yearly reviews, lazy and not fun to complete due to how long they gestate. One piece of the writing I wanted to salvage is this, which is a barebones fragment which does not completely deal with this lo-fi oddity, but is a hint of it that hopefully will tantalise.

Also, even if this is a negative review, if I had the chance to see the film again I would gladly revisit and possibly cover The Plagiarists, as it was a real curiosity worthy for covering.

I never thought I would see a film with a black screen at the end showing all the books and materials references in a little reference section, but hey, The Plagiarists was an odd misfire. The structure, a mumblecore drama shot on videotape about a pretentious white heterosexual couple whose car breaks down and meets an older man, is compelling if you are open minded, reverberating onwards in the downfall of their relationship when the girlfriend is perturbed by the older man quoting a Scandinavian author off the top of his head and without quoting the reference.

Even shooting this film in Betamax has an unexpected aura that adds to experience, the rival of VHS being a very idiosyncratic choice in itself, which was said to have a higher picture quality and existed more commonly after its mainstream failure in industries like news broadcasts, befitting a film where one of the couple is an advertisement director who has higher inspirations. The problem is that this film decides to be vague in what it actually wants to talk about. Eventually its theme, alongside the breakup of a relationship, is the notion of legitimacy which I honestly have completely forgotten entirely, aside from The Hunger Games being quoted as an example for the argument and that it became nasal gazing over tranquil video fuzzed images of a beach.

I cannot help but think of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool (1997), which managed to ask of these subjects by having a garbage man character write scatological, crude poetry and make it funny. The Plagiarists at times looks like it is going to be subversive, especially as the older man accused of theft of intellectual rights is a working class African American man, only to wander off into something less.  

[Archive]: Sunday School Musical (2008)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
/images/I/51iu7XgQHIL.jpg

Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg

Screenplay: Rachel Lee Goldenberg and Ashley Holloway

Cast: Chris Chatman as Zachary; Candise Lakota as Savannah; Krystle Connor as Aundrea; Robert Acinapura as Miles; Amy Ganser as Margaret; Millena Gay as Anita; Dustin Fitzsimons as Charlie; Cliff Tan as Trevor; Mark Hengst as Pastor Joe

First written on 10th July 2013

Continuing with my Archive reviews, here is piece of an entire month of "Bad" cinema from my older blog, which is still in existence but with mind of keeping all my materials together, I've transitioned to here. This was film #12 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema, back when I was mad enough to coordinate an entire month where each day had a review; eventually, to pull back the curtain like the Wizard in Oz, I cheated by composing the reviews the month before, as with my October horror festivals, but the challenge was felt and I am still proud of these mad little challenges even if they caused more stress than the plan was intended to.

As always, none of the material no matter how embarrassing it is will be altered, just with the grammar and paragraphing changed when required to make it easier to read.

In terms of the review, I was mean to The Asylum, but I will defend the attitude of my older self that by the 2000s this straight-to-video market got exceptionally lazy, even if my rose tinted glasses about Roger Corman have disappeared, and in mind to how I have become found of the low budget curiosities that have made up this era. The line later on that Christians should make their own films has becomes ironically precedent for myself hasn't it though? I confess I haven't dealt into the wave of Christian cinema from the United States that was being made from this era onwards, but by all accounts, the modern strain has none of the nuisance of say, Robert Bresson, instead falling into the kind of very simplified viewpoints that are problematic. We should point these issues out as much in liberal American cinema, but there's as much to clearly find in this wave of Christian cinema of a conservative bent which isn't helping the cause either, not just Kirk Cameron taking a nose dive on metaphorical concrete when he made a very embarrassing defend about Christmas that appeared in some cinemas. There's a lot I'd want to watch and even cover though, not just morbidly as by accounts Indivisible (2018), a war film based on a real life war chaplain, is a fascinating and appropriately complex film I'm now reminded to investigate, so I wouldn't just dismiss this entire cultural movement offhand without an eyewitness account.

As for Sunday School Musical itself? I'd gladly investigate the film again even though I was put off by The Asylum back then because they never lived up by the standard of at least being memorable. Sadly Chris Chatman, the lead who I compliment, never made enough film baring one in post-production called Welcome Matt. The director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, to my surprise, is behind the curious Lifetime film A Deadly Adoption (2015), played entirely straight by all accounts as their usual type of film but starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig outside their usual ballpark, marking it a potential curiosity if I can ever track it down. Goldenberg is also unfortunately the directoress of the musical remake of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which has been in limbo due to its casting of YouTuber Logan Paul, a figure whose controversial decision to upload footage of a suicide victim on his YouTube page contributed to the film, which was complete, never getting released.

To soften the tone of that later, incredible dark piece of knowledge I learnt of just putting together this Archive review, I'm also throwing in a bonus mini-one about the live action Fist of the North Star adaptation. Not really reviews, more of a stub, but sod it, since I horde this content on my computer hard drive, why not release it again anyway? Plus it's a reminder that, whilst a 1000 Anime review in truth, if I could ever re-see the 1995 film, based on the Japanese manga/anime franchise, I'd more than happy revisit the film for all the curious tit-bits I mention. I didn't even write, to my surprise, that Malcolm McDowell is also in it of many details long forgotten...

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From http://www.cantstopthemovies.com/wp-content
/uploads/2011/04/sunday1.png

Original Review

I worried, looking out of curiosity for reviews of this film online before planning one of my own, that by covering it I fall in danger of taking on the same cheap targets that I questioned professional critics of doing with the Jack and Jill (2011) review. Is anyone who reviews a film like this, including myself, really going to write anything thoughtful, even actually funny, or will this be like a bad video review where you see the whole film dispersed with obvious and bad jokes? Am I just being a hypocrite for reviewing this, and writing this entire introduction?

I have broken a rule set up for this season by reviewing a film made by The Asylum company. I was willing to break the rules here because this movie seemed to be an exception from the material that made me put that rule up in the first place. It’s not about an overgrown, CGI fish monster but a low budget musical designed to take advantage of the High School Musical phenomenon and also be part of the company’s Faith Films subdivision, designed to make Christian themed films. Getting hold of this film was for the promise of a terrible movie, a concept that, as this season has gone on, is pretty questionable now, but in hindsight a genre that is usually extravagantly made turned into such a minuscule budgeted, Christian film was also a fascinating proposition. This kind of melding of genres and concepts in unexpected ways is like viewing abstract Non-Euclidean geometry within a HP Lovecraft story, trying to imagine all of its parts working together without going insane. The film itself is, well, what I have sadly come to expect from The Asylum company; as much as I want to love them, it feels like I keep going back to them like an idiot, as all of us who have reviewed their films, as they secretly praise us for the reviews even if they are negative ones.

When he is transferred to a new school, and away from his adored choir and friends, Zachery (Chris Chatman) finds it difficult to connect to his environment. His grades are failing, the choir at his new school are hopeless in terms of their musical abilities, and the church of his old choir is in danger of closing because of finance issues. However, it is possible that, through joining together the choirs, and winning a competition, that every problem can be solved, all the while he slowly connects to the leader of the new choir Savannah (Candine Lakota) who has to overcome losing her mother only a few months earlier. In the film’s favour, the cast for the most part, especially Chatman, have musical talent; it is great that for such an ill advised take on a musical that there are people in front of the camera who can sing and have charisma, and there are moments where the music they are singing too is trying to be good. Unfortunately, for most of the film, it is also music at its most generic and sterilised rather than really good songs. This could be only my personal taste, but when songs have the same tone and sound to each other it is not a good sign. For the most part, it is merely bland and innocuous, but as with the song set around a bench, it can become terrible.

Sunday School Musical outside the music is worthless. Chatman had the potential to be someone special, if he had made anymore films after this 2008 production, but the rest of the film is cheap looking. It is sad that the practices of former exploitative film companies have not been continued for the most part this era; at least Roger Corman and Italian film producers would hire talented directors and film making personal and let them make whatever they want as long as it could be marketed for cinemas. Even Godfrey Ho had a sense of fun. In this era – where blockbusters hog the cinemas, and digital film cameras and computer effects are cheap – laziness has sadly been allowed to come into this sub culture of cinema. Even straight-to-video films from the yesteryear could attempt to be great works, and while there are still great films made today, wading for them in the mass is even more difficult.

Sunday School Musical is bland looking; unnecessarily frequent and choppy in its editing, and just dull to sit through. I am more likely to sleep through another viewing of this than feel pain. As a cash-grab for High School Musical, which I admit to having not viewed alongside its sequels, it is a half-hearted attempt at a musical that could have been special even if it was a failure. The Cannon Group, back in the 1980s, would have tried something special even on a pittance. The Aslyum group, from Almighty Thor (2011), which I reviewed for this blog, to this, are exceptionally lackadaisical in their attitude.

And what makes this even more disconcerting is that this is supposed to be a Christian film. There is very little in the film that really delves into faith or Christian values at all. It has choirs as it main plot and Savannah’s father is a preacher, but this seems arbitrary. It could be argued that these types of films don’t have to directly tackle issues of faith, but this is pointless as there are films already made that Christians enjoy and gain a lot from, and if there wasn’t, they could make their own films rather than rely on someone like The Asylum. A Christian film for me, as it stands now, should tackle the issues of faith in ordinary life, which Sunday School Musical fails to do at all and instead panders to a lame interpretation of R&B and hip-hop music lacking the bite and meaning to it. Alongside 2012 Doomsday (2008), another of these faith based films by the company I’ve seen, there is something exceptionally wrong about The Asylum’s attitude to these films that Corman or an Italian producer, even Ho, is completely innocent of. Not only are they making lazy rip-offs of blockbusters rather than fun ones like the Italians could make, but it can be argued that they are conning Christians, who would want movies for them, without any attempt at making something interesting. As an agnostic^[1], I can see how something like Sunday School Musical, in its lifelessness, would be insulting to the Christian god, like offering a turd to Him as some kind of sacrificial gift and excepting to be lavished with praise.

And the worst part? I am dumb enough to review another film from them after my bile for Almighty Thor. Admittedly, I had hope for this to be something interesting from The Asylum, and I still want to see Mega Piranha (2010) and their take on the Halloween films, but I have tricked myself again even if I spent only 50p for a second hand disc. Are all of us who review these films, even mock them, just encouraging this sort of filmmaking paradoxically? For all the criticisms I’ve had with the film, I’ve just encouraged more people to watch this film when it should be ignored and vanish from existence. I could have scrapped this review to do this, but to both stroke my ego and out of need to write about this film, I have to post it. If the phrase ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ ever applied to any context, this is the perfect time to use it. On my part, I may go for three and please The Asylum again, or actually have some common sense next time.

From https://mojtv.hr/thumb.ashx?path=/images/cc47f58c-fd9d
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[1] Pass six years, I'm also not an agnostic as I wrote this review but a spiritual person, as a result of discovering that I had entirely misinterpreted what "agnostic" meant. Being "Agnostic", which I didn't know writing this review, is actually closer in spectrum to atheism rather than not knowing what a divine godhead might be, but with some philsophical differences of importance, if you research its theological and philosophical beginnings even on Wikipedia. That does leave me in the annoying position of believing in an entity upstairs and soul, but not with any organised religious ship to anchor myself to. Also "spiritualist" doesn't roll off the tongue and just evokes charlatan Victorians Harry Houdini particularly hated, so its a position in dire need of a marketing department to come up with a name for. 

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Bonus: Fist of the North Star (Director: Tony Randel, 1995)

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star is very limited, but a British Kenshiro who looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, was not what I was expecting but utterly hilarious.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, visually part of the era and crammed with the obsessions (end of the world scenario, a cast with everyone from director Melvin Van Peebles to pro-wrestler Vader), it is pretty tedious however. Even if Chris Penn steals every scene he is in, the film’s narrative is incredibly generic and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation, and the gore from the original manga removed for the most part, undermines the whole project. I’ve never been a fan of Tony Randel, especially of his second Hellraiser film, and I wonder what this’ll been like if it was allowed to be good or as insane as a film like Street Fighter from the same era.

[Archive]: Deatherman (2012)

From https://i0.wp.com/terriblemoviesforterriblepeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/deatherman_thumb25255B325255D.jpg?resize=396%2C396

Director: Bobby Keller

Screenplay: Bobby Keller

Cast: Dominique Capone as Holley Cooper; Gena Comandy as Tessa Carpenter; Mike Gavern as Dan Anders; Jenni Grasso as Buffy Winters; John Kasper as Dalton Law; Bobby Keller         as Coyote; Jim Keller as Mumbo Chef; Allison LaRussa as Leech

[Preferably, I would like my reviews to be published within some reasonably time soon after viewing each film/media I cover. Unfortunately, in the case of this review, I had written out a version on paper but never typed the document up for publishing, which is entirely against my usual method for creating content for the blog. Desiring to begin including old material on said blog as "Archive" material, and not wanting to waste a review from early 2019, I publish this review now. Due to the nature of what happened, with only those notes available, I apologise for the lack of my usual practice of improving and adding to the material in the midst of creating a typed digital copy. Barring correcting any potential grammar and spelling mistakes, alongside [bracketed text] clears up confusion content, this is entirely the notes typed up so the time spent writing them, and viewing this extremely obscure no-budget film, wasn't wasted.]

It pains me to say this, considering there were moments that amused me, but sometimes your resources can be too small to fully create an interesting work. Deatherman, a throwback to eighties and nineties shot-on-video cinema likewise shot-on-video, and under sixty minutes, does feel flimsy even in knowledge that you can have very little to work with. Improvising is a virtue, but a bar scene that feels like three actors in a room, unless you can add an enthusiastic energy in spite of this, is going to lack mood and drag at any cost of production.

Ostensibly, one weatherman learns that a new female colleague is joining [their station]. A sexist, both dismissing her ability to became a weather reporter and hitting on her, his comeuppance is soon imminent. She and two female friends, who all knew each other in psychotherapy, dispose of the body, only for acid rain to resurrect him, jokes on the loose logic [of this actually being able to work only taking place when its already become] a revenge tale. It's silly, just for the title pun and could've easily been ridiculous. Honestly, the real joy is to be found not in the story, a horror comedy whose lack of structure and unused resources strips the energy out, but in the humour provided by enthusiastic non actors. [The premise is average], as you are following a completely unlikable character, the Deatherman, who cannot be stopped and (barring some gore) throttles most his victims, [the film] only a few times [springing to some life] like with an umbrella [related murder and little else].

Instead it's Marvin, a one scene one joke character for a fake news channel commercial, screeching about his magic shop over a fake news screen and telling his grandmother to go fuck herself [who is of reward], or one of the female lead's friends once wanting to marry a box of cereal. Arguably Deatherman, a film really only an acquired taste[,] grows into something legitimately fun because, contrary to the plot, there's a tiny cast of characters doing incredibly silly things or having some comic timing. Such as the restaurant chef, a guy not even in a chef's costume and a chef's hat, muttering like a madman, bashing vegetables to death with a knife, and repeating words like "Caesar Salad) over and over again. If anything, it's a great case study of how cinema is not about narratives but the importance of the likes of mood and character, great narratives birthed through these too.

By itself, Deatherman wouldn't suffice even for fans of SOV cinema, long patches that are sluggish or compare badly to more ambitious and weird shot-on-video films this was a tribute too. These one joke characters, not to forget a drug dealer who's a fan of the weatherman who even rings him, have a spark of fun which is an absolute blessing; legitimately so, as there's a glee in this silliness [in vast contrast to the problems with the film's structure].

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/
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Archival Review: Next (2007)

From http://1.fwcdn.pl/po/17/22/
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Director: Lee Tamahori

Screenplay: Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum

Cast: Nicolas Cage (as Cris Johnson); Julianne Moore (as Callie Ferris); Jessica Biel (as Liz Cooper); Thomas Kretschmann (as Mr. Smith); Tory Kittles (as Cavanaugh)

Unfortunately the site that I wrote for, Videotape Swapshop, is no more. This is sad for me having enjoyed writing reviews for the site, but it also means that there'll be links to reviews from that site which are now dead. I do however have all the reviews I ever written for them, god willing, that can be reposted. The following was supposed to be part of an ongoing series reviewing every Nicolas Cage film (yet) made; instead of rewriting it, like I will do for all the other reviews, I'll leave it in its original form and only add additional notes for any context that might be missing transferring it to this site. I will not add any notes on whether these films are "abstract" either, only with some of them possibly being covered properly for this blog in the future in a new piece.

As for whether I should continue reviewing every Nicolas Cage film ever made, I may continue it on this blog as an additional feature even if it proved at points with some of the films watched to be painful. As much as Cage is one of my favourite actors, the reason why the review series was started, I realise now that like many actors his filmography is far from perfect.

I find myself stuck with trying to write about Next. I wonder why it was ever made in the first place in fact, another in a long list of failed Philip K. Dick adaptations where the comedic punch line is that, beyond the central premise, the adaptations are said to be so far removed from the novels and stories that its laughable to make comparisons. Blade Runner (1982) is that immense exception as most have vanished into obscurity, the only faithful take coming from indie wunderkind Richard Linklater with the strange, rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly (2006). Of course within the recent year or so Dick has had a small resurgence when Amazon Prime decided to make an original programme for its site based on The Man In The High Castle; whether it could succeed in bringing Philip K. Dick into the mainstream again is unknown, but it will immediately have more success than Next, a failure if there ever was one in the Nicolas Cage filmography as well.

Playing Frank Cadillac aka. Cris Johnson, Nicolas Cage is a Las Vegas magician who can see exactly two minutes into the future, able to use it to win modest sums of money and dodge punches before they're thrown. When he is in-avertedly caught doing something suspicious at a casino and manages to flee from the security in a ludicrous and random car chase, it catches the attention of FBI Special Agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) who wants to use his psychic powers to find a terrorist group and the nuclear bomb they've snuck into US soil. Cadillac is more concerned with a mysterious woman who, when she is central in his mind, allows him to see further in time, spending his time in a cafe awaiting the day he finally meets her, a woman who teaches on an Indian reservation called Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel). Unfortunately with both the FBI and the terrorists themselves after him Cadillac effectively puts Liz in danger and will have to rely on his psychic gift to protect her and save the world.

If there is anything of good in Next it's that it does try to be clever with Cadillac's ability to see in the future. A lot of wrong footing takes place with an incident happening only for the film to go back in time and for it to reveal that it was a precognition, something that will feel like a cheat for many but for me actually made the film vaguely interesting. This is definitely the case with the ending, which could feel like an utter cop-out, but was fun. There's even some moments of inspiration such as Cadillac trying out various pick up lines to greet Liz only for all of them to fail and having to try something much different, or when very later on he has to find where the terrorists are by literally splitting into duplicates to follow each route.  In the perfect world this could've easily made the film great, even as a silly action sci-fi, if it had a good backbone behind it.

Unfortunately, as the last paragraph warned of, an inspired idea cannot save a film if the rest is so badly compromised. Over ninety minutes the rest is a terrible, bland waste where the first warnings of its failings are when he has to do an opening monologue over himself doing things to explain the premise¹. Despite critical acclaim for Once Were Warriors (1994) in his native New Zealand, Tamahori does sadly hold the mantle of the director of the worse James Bond film so far made, Die Another Day (2002), although I suspect that was as much compromise from the producers that lead to the disaster it was. Next is just as bland, barring its clever use of its premise a complete and utter waste of time. You can imagine a more entertaining Cannon Pictures adaptation from the eighties which would run with the premise and its comically Euro trash villains, but made in 2007 the result is un-dynamic and drab.

Probably the most ludicrous aspect of the film alongside some of the most dreadful CGI effects I've seen in a while, including a train, is the cast it has. Biel and Cage have some charisma, but Moore really does feel like a sore thumb amongst the trio, to the point you could've helped the film out if you excised her scenes and added more drama in her place. In a world where Cage's ability is under suspicion without context for others to believe her, you wouldn't follow her beliefs to pursue Cadillac if you were a senior member of the FBI, not only wasting man power and money but leading to potential embarrass and cheap jokes likes for those in the US military who thought they could weaponize psychic powers by killing goats through the power of staring². That the only way his power can be of any use is through Liz Cooper being a deus ex machina makes Special Agent Callie Ferris not only too big in her britches with her orders but useless.

The film feels too brisk in plotting to the point that its twist ending is far from being an embarrassment to end all embarrassments but a relief in its cheesiness. So much in the film is lacking of vitality that this review is exceptionally short without padding it like I have [, with this standing]³ up as another of the worse Cage films I've covered⁴, not technically incompetent but bad in its average nature and waste of existence. Like a lot of action and sci-fi films of its ilk, Philip K. Dick adaptations or not, it's so mediocre one finds difficulty in writing anything about it.

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^1. One of the more odder discoveries of the Nicolas Cage Project as it was originally called was how many of his films rely on him giving voiceover during introductions to his characters' lives. He has a great voice, for the screen and for radio, but these voiceovers appeared in a lot of bland films I covered and proved to be a warning of the staleness of the final film baring a few exceptions (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)) where the monologue given to him had more spark to them.

^2. Unfortunately, like for many amateur and professional writers of film reviews, you read some of the jokes you originally wrote and cringe with embarrassment at how leaden they are. Expect some really bloated sentences from some of these reviews as much as some vaguely interesting insights, the former something I had mostly excised in my reviews over the years but occasionally appearing in clumsy references like this.

^3. The review hadn't been completely checked over when Videotape Swapshop sadly ended, so some grammatical errors had to be dealt with without compromising the original text.

^4. Unfortunately there'll be some terrible films being brought up as I post these old reviews and maybe cover more of them anew. Cage is a great actors, as I'll defend in this reviews, better than the films themselves in many cases, but the post Wicker Man material is going to exhibit a lot of pain on my part...

Archival Review: Under The Skin (2013)

From http://troublewithfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12
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Dir. Jonathan Glazer

In the review that I am linking to below, I hesitated whether I would come to love Under The Skin in its unsettling beauty long afterwards. Its nearly a year now, and the film has stayed as one of the most important films I saw in 2014 because it's refused to leave my mind. Revisting it, it still retains its power, though I wish that as many people saw the film on a cinema screen for its full effect. Also of significance since I last saw this is my growing admiration for Scarlett Johansson. As an actress, not the person where there is the Soda Stream controversy to pick over, (look it up if you're curious), she starred in three very unconventional sci-fi films in 2014 in British cinemas - Under The Skin, Lucy (2014) and  Her (2013) - and in all of them she showed a talent that's won me over. Not just taking into account she has three very "different" films in her filmography, all three films stand out as being among the most interesting of the year, which places her up on a higher pedestal for me for the willing to take a risk with all three films. Out of the three, Under The Skin is the one stands out potentially as my favourite film for last year. I intend one day to cover a Best of 2014 post, though with some greater consideration, which is why I did not post one by the start of this January, and this will be a film virtually impossible to knock off number one unless I find another that had such a sensual effect on me.

From https://laceysfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/under-the-skin.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Between Mica Levi's incredible score, her first for any film mind you, to the juxtaposition of semi-documentary with the most abstract of science fiction, a lot in Under The Skin feels utterly alien, if you mind the pun. The juxtaposition of this story with a realism of being set in Scotland is the deciding factor of the film's effect on me, such ordinary things, even Tescos, turned into things you look at with a new perspective. The result feels like stepping through the world as an extraterrestrial like Johansson.

From http://selectiveviewing.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/under-the-skin.jpg

Personal Opinion:

For the full review, written when I first viewed the film, and whose content still apply perfectly, follow the link to my old blog here. 

Archival Reviews: Branded To Kill (1967)

Booklet Cover for the Exceptionable Arrow Video Blu-Ray/DVD Release
(http://diversejapan.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/branded-to-kill-booklet-sleeve.jpg)

Dir. Seijun Suzuki

About: 

Since I wrote a blog before this one, it's wrong to erase the old material I compiled on it and, even if I may re-write many reviews from it with the practice I have now, there are others that still retain the opinions I have of the works covered perfectly, so why not include a link to the old page and go through the films in question through the new structure of my reviews? To begin this, why not Branded To Kill, a poster boy for unconventional pulp cinema which famously got its director banned from making films by the studio he was working for? A narrative about the No. 3 top assassin of an organisation (Joe Shishido) whose abrupt mistake during an assassination leads his group to try and take him out, a delirious film in monochrome with abrupt tangents that influenced many a filmmaker decades after,

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

This might raise eyebrows, but from the few films I've seen, Seijun Suzuki could make even more unconventional films than this one. It's still attached to a very well worn narrative, contrary to its reputation, though that doesn't stop it, through its style, presentation and narrative turns from living up to its reputation as being a very off-kilter film. It's just that the director could go even further in this experimentation with great results.

Personal Opinion:

For that, go and read my original review here - Branded To Kill Review - for the final opinion and a longer write up.

From http://ishootthepictures.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/
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