Power Stone (Japan, 2001)

I think the biggest problem with this series isn’t the movie itself but the cover:

Note: Man in Parachute Pants Not in These Episodes.

1)      While Falcon, the guy with the red suit may be in the movie, his buddy with the green parachute pants appears in no episodes on this disc. Uh, false advertising Power Stone?

2)      “Based on the Mega-Hit Video Game.” If you see this on any DVD, run in the other direction.

3)      On the top right, there’s a giant rooster. Now I don’t remember that from any of the episodes, but nevertheless that rooster’s going to give me nightmares for a few years.

Now, back to Power Stone. Meh. The episodes I watched (I could only get through three) were a bit dry, but not dreadful. The Capcom video game sounds pretty exciting from Wikipedia, and, in fact, I was pretty intrigued during the first twenty minutes of “Turmoil in O-Edo.” It made sense to me—Falcon and friends, a concubine named Rouge, the series’ sacrificial lamb Ayami, and a butler named Appolos look for stones. Sounds a bit like the first Sonic the Hedgehog, but whatever, I can deal with that. Unlike Sonic, Falcon isn’t possessive with his stones; both Rouge and Ayami get one during the scenes I watched. He even offered one to a bad guy, who in the same scene, with the help of the stones, transforms into a giant spider to beat the shit out of Falcon. Maybe that’s the general problem with the series, because let’s face it, Falcon’s a softie. If I were a villain on the show, I would be much more likely to take Falcon out to coffee than go to war.

From my limited knowledge of the Pokemon series, the boy protagonist of that one also looks for animals, collects them, and then fights over them with other animals. Of course, Falcon is looking for stones. I guess the problem is the stones aren’t that exciting visually. At least with the Pirates of Dark Water, another stone quest, we get some “gee shiny” moments when Ren finds his crystals. These look more like those annoying stones in Gem Drop.

The battles, too, aren’t violent, and often pretty truncated—most of the episodes are made up instead of resolvable plot developments, an evil pirate comes to Moon Land, causes drought, and then is overcome by the strength of the Power Stone. Didn’t see that one coming!

I don’t know why I’m being hard on Power Stone. It wasn’t bad, just like much of the cartoons out there, the plot was uninteresting and vague. In the very last episode, the prophetic prostitute Rouge reveals that Jack, a mummy/spider who has hijacked a cruise ship (to Soil Land!) is in fact one hundred years old. There is a pause—but who didn’t see that? Do alive people wait on glaciers for cruise ships only to morph into giant grasshoppers? No. Dead Zombies with problems do that.

Final rating: 2 out of 4 stars—an entirely mediocre two stars for a series too bland even for this blog.

A Youtube remix much better than the series itself.

Space Mutiny (South Africa: 1988)

Mutiny in SPACE!

Per Jeff’s suggestion, I’m going to try Space Mutiny. This was not easy because, well, it’s already been done, and every copy of Space Mutiny available is the Mystery Science Theater 3000 annotated version. Not to dis the dudes on MST3K at all but it’s hard to build on their magnificent riffage.

But I’ll try. First of all, David Winters WTF? All I know you from is the awesome West Side Story choreography. Unlike Danny Boyle, you cannot switch genre with the greatest of ease. In fact your attempt to add dance to a sci fi flick, the Bolerians, crashes and burns as quickly as one of your many space cart explosions.

Let’s talk about the Bolerians for a moment, because I think they get to the root of the problem. Usually at this point in the review, I tackle the plot, but unfortunately this movie was plotless— there has been a mutiny on a giant space ship populated by very stupid people, not unlike WALL-E, except the mutiny involves South African B-actors and not cute robots. Anyway, the Bolerians are a race of racy females who somehow make it onto the ship and then for the next several hours (days?) of the movie, are held in a giant cell, their only playthings static electricity balls. Their interactions with the movie are luckily limited to a few appearances to the actors in dream form. Imagine Disney’s Cinderella if the Fairy Godmother were whacked off her ass on mescaline. Yet the Bolerians define this movie, just like the director, crew, and actors, they are aimless jellyfishes whose entrances and exits into this project are almost carefully random, ala experimental film except by stupid people.

But why South Africa? Why 1988? While even ensemble comedies like A Fish Called Wanda were commenting on the evil of Apartheid, this movie stays relatively mum. The vaguely fascist Calgun, leader of the elite Enforcers mentions in one scene that he is mad the Southern Star (their space ship) has never touched down on a planet, fine, but then he goes on to mention something about how much he wants to accumulate resources. I guess my question to Calgun is: your spaceship encompasses a brewery, two discos, a vegetable garden, high speed golf carts, and a couple of warehouses inexplicably made up of brick and mortar. What else could you want, man?

Maybe Calgun is frustrated about his name. Everyone else on board is called Steve or Scott, he’s always Calgun. I guess there’s a bad apple on each ship; everyone else on this spandex-happy, hula-hooping cruise to nowhere seems well-adjusted. Maybe Calgun just needs to spend some time dancing. For a space ship on the verge of eternal destruction, there are way too many parties, leading me to believe that even the people on board who care about whether they are becoming space dust are just too embarrassed to do anything; I mean they did steal their ship from the Battlestar Galactica people, right? Not only that, this is the future yet they’re still using tinny Apple computers and riding around in space golf carts in seemingly never ending corridors. And yes MST3K, their commander is Santa Claus. For a movie about mutiny, you wonder why Santa didn’t just ram this clunker into a passing asteroid and do us all a favor.

Very existential and very amazing—5 out of 5. Thank you David Winters and your thinly veiled writer pseudonym Maria Dante. Thank you so much. Now see this movie below. Also, some choice quotes courtesy of IMDB.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096149/quotes

Destiny (Israel: 2005)

Now I don’t dislike this film and to all intents, this is a good movie. Artfully done, nice unorthodox camera work, I like the very long exposures, the quick and quirky camera positions, even the obvious nod to Russian Ark, another film that is shot in one continuous take. For that reason, I can’t really fault this movie’s execution.

Problem is I just don’t get what is happening. I have watched this now one hundred times and here is my best breakdown scene by scene:

1)      Mime dances and looks at the camera.

2)      Woman looks at grave and cries. She holds big rose and then throws it.

3)      Mime runs away.

4)      Woman sits on bench with man.

5)      Mime runs toward bench.

And…End Film!

Various Theories:

1)      Mime is dead ala Sixth Sense but still is afraid people with special glasses will see him.

2)      Mime is actor who is afraid to appear in this plotless movie, ergo continually runs away from the camera’s lens.

3)      Mime is actually improv coach who is checking up on a truant, much bereaved member of his class.

4)      Mime is delivering mime-pizza. Forgets address. Ends up in cemetery.

So, final verdict, one out of four stars. Easily watchable, good concept but poor execution. Now have some mime pizza and check this blog back next week.

Naked Killer (Clarence Fok Yiu-leung, Hong Kong, 1992)

Ah, Naked Killer. OK, Let me just get this off my chest. We can’t keep seeing each other. The gratuitous violence, creepy sex, and ultimately, the grating “genitals” jokes just, well, are too much. You need time to go out in the world and discover yourself: comedy, porno, thriller, who the heck are you and why do you feel the need to sloppily change each scene?

I am ashamed to admit I have seen Naked Killer twice in my life. First I caught parts of it as a sort of impromptu bad film festival my last semester at college and now for this review. For the uninitiated, Naked Killer tackles the story of Kitty, a bad ass man killer who falls for her trainer, Sister Cindy, who trains her in the way of killing dudes (and is very adamant she is not a lesbian, but then proceeds to molest Kitty at a disco). As always happens in soft porn cum thrillers cum crime movies criminal Kitty falls for the detective Tinam even though that goes against everything she stands for. But no worries, bumbling Tinam is so bad at his job he vomits every time he holds a gun and is always getting in fights with his boss, but the vomiting is the really gross part. Things go awry when Sister Cindy starts a battle with her former partner in crime Princess (who is also a lesbian). Get the picture?

So, why is Naked Killer a terrible foreign flick? Several reasons, first, while sexual imagery in movies can often be exciting, here it is out of place and boring. And this is not just because it is soft porn set to synthesized soft rock, no, it is because the sex comes at the wrong moments in the movie. For example, Kitty and Tinam’s first time puts me to sleep because it comes just as Princess is introduced and we start to see some conflict. In fact, the film’s gratuitous sex makes me doubt the seriousness of the central story—if even the director will take long breaks from the action, why shouldn’t the audience?

Fine, Naked Killer has sex. Most audiences were drawn in by the Naked in the title—in fact any nudity in a 1992 Hong Kong film was provocative enough to be censored by authorities, as happened with this movie. But what it lacks is a coherent, believable plot. Why does Tinam throw up every time he holds a gun? What really makes Kitty want to kill men? Who makes poison lipstick (Revlon’s Anaphylaxis Allure?) and wouldn’t it first kill the wearer? Why does Sister Cindy kiss Princess in the first place if they are mortal enemies? Where does Sister Cindy get the fresh supply of pedophiles in her basement? Too many questions. Finally, I cannot take a movie seriously that includes the hilariously subtitled lines, “Don’t worry, I had enough milk that I will survive long enough to have a gastric purge” after Kitty is poisoned.

I give this movie three out of four stars for being sort of good in a “cult classic” sort of way. It is admittedly as much fun to watch with friends as The Killer (another Hong Kong crime movie), and the dubbing/subtitles are hilarious. Or watch it with your enemies—just as fun. Just before you try any full on kisses with them check your epi-pen.

Nudity? Check. Guns? Check. Good times? Check!

Turkey: The Man Who Saved the World (Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam) (1982) Dir. Çetin İnanç

So, I’m starting this blog with a mind to mine the world’s worst film. I know blogs exist that review bad movies, but not many provide that global perspective. That’s what I’m here for. Escape with me each week on my flight around the world. I promise to find you the worst—whether from public libraries, VHS clearance bins, foreign language torrents, or South American landfills. Maybe not the fourth thing, but nevertheless if it’s bad, I’ll find it.

Preliminaries out of the way, let’s move to a quainter time, 1982 Turkey, when we knew right from wrong because right was human and wrong was a “wizard” who wore a spike-scarf and used his wife the queen as the one-woman welcoming committee for visiting invaders (what happened to space hospitality, seriously guys?). What am I talking about? The Man Who Saved the World, better known as Turkish Star Wars, perhaps the greatest foreign bad movie ever and a good first film to start this blog.

I say “ever” because 1) not only does the director rip off the story, music, and even certain scenes from the original Star Wars but 2) he uses these things not to clarify or make his movie more palatable but to confuse an already intensely complicated plot. Let me try to explain.

Like Star Wars, the movie begins with a long-winded explanation, many eons ago, galaxy far far away, you know, except adds a twist. For example, “hundreds of thousands years had been passed and Earth and planets systems in space turned into…the galaxy system” but because of nuclear war “in some cases parts of the Earth had fragmented.” Brazil? Chile? The UAE? What didn’t make the cut—we never learn. Luckily, for the remaining people, “Human brain molecules protected the Earth.” Phew! Nothing like human tissue to help me sleep at night!

Yet terror beckons in the form of “the wizard,” an alien with (surprise!) a Death Star and a plot to destroy the Earth. Unfortunately, first he needs a human brain, to what end is never fully explained. In my version of the movie Earth is destroyed and the movie ends after the first five minutes. Luckily for the plot but not me, two heroes emerge who launch a space campaign in, hmm, x-wings to battle the wizard.

They crash onto a desert-like planet in the middle of an unidentified world. Wandering, surrounded by archaeo-junk, Turkish beefcake #1 suggests to #2 “start your famous whistle that women could not resist.” Beefcake #2 complies and emits a truly heartrending spurt of high-pitched sound. If I may jump in here, women of the galaxy, please stop falling for this guy. I know it’s fun to have your ears fried, but please, really, enough.

Instead of women, a space cavalry appears that attacks the men. Through their cunning and acrobatic skills they defeat these horseback villains. To save half the plot summary, through the next hour or so, the boys will meet similarly costumed menaces who they will then fend off. Between these strikes on the planet, they meet an entrancing local woman who ensorcells #1 with her looks. Not to mention she has a son, which doesn’t seem to bother him, so all the better. They also train on the local terrain, to hilarious effect. While their more pampered Western counterparts may work with personal trainers like Yoda, these two have to rely on hitting and abusing rocks for their workout—to hilarious effect.

After a barfight and several close calls with the Wizard’s minions (who look something like Triple-A baseball mascots), the men are abducted. They must fight the final battle with the wizard, rescue the girl, seduce his queen (who unsurprisingly is having marital trouble (could you imagine marrying a man whose sole hobby is spending time in bars with furries?)) and find a cardboard sword.

I’ll save you the suspense, the humans win, but not before we see the destruction of more rocks, the Death Star, and the Earth for good measure. We leave the movie with these words of wisdom, “The man who is going to make the peace live is no doubt a human.” When you think about that, it almost makes sense. Almost…

To end, I will not even tackle the technical problems in this movie, whether the overexposure, the non-sequiter stolen footage, or the dubbing that seemingly never synchs with the actors’ lips. Instead, before I send you off to click on the clip and watch for yourselves, I would like to discuss the movie’s idiosyncratic philosophy. First, what’s the deal with the whole religion discussion? First, we hear that the humans are not united, then they find religion, which is well and good, then non-believers persecute the godly and they have to build “cities seven layers below the ground” and “Jesus Christ led them there.” Are we facing a new anti-religious phase, is Jesus coming back for a third time and where did he go? And why is he leading them underground? If Jesus is back couldn’t he stop the Wizard? Maybe we can piece this together in the comments page. Finally, if Beefcake #2 believes that “If they’d known a bit about laughing there wouldn’t have been a nuclear war” and Beefcake #1 then laughs but to no effect, what are the filmmakers really saying about humor? Don’t most evil villains laugh a great deal before they launch the bomb that fragments the world? So many unanswered questions!

I give this star travesty star four out of four stars for being out of this world and recommend you click below and watch it here.  I have now seen it three times and each time it really only gets worse, so enjoy!

Jonathan Peters

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!