Reviews

THE TERMINAL LIST Review: When A Hero’s Homecoming Creates Villains

Created by David DiGilio and based on a series of novels from author and former U.S. SEAL, Jack Carr, Amazon Studios debuted the eight-episode action drama, The Terminal List last month. The show centers on Lieutenant Commander James Reece (Chris Pratt) who is forced to take matters in his own hands when members of his team are murdered, and his family is assassinated. The conspiracy goes even deeper when he learns that a brain tumor he’s just been diagnosed with is connected to an unlicensed drug given to him and his team. Armed with all the artillery he can gather and with the help of dauntless reporter Katie Buranek (Constance Wu), CIA Ground Operative and former SEAL and BUD/S classmate Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch) and private airline pilot and former U.S Army Officer Liz Riley (Tyner Rushing), Reece sets out to find answers, and make all those who benefitted from […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: For a Dose of Thrills, Make an Appointment with DR LAMB!

Christina Ortega

Scrolling through a list of available films to review for a film festival can be overwhelming. One should not judge a book by its cover, but sometimes a reviewer has to follow their gut and request films whose posters and titles catch their attention. I can’t explain exactly what drew me to Dr. Lamb at first, but once I read the brief description saying that it was about a serial killer in Hong Kong, I knew I wanted to watch it. Dr. Lamb was written by Kam-Fai Law and directed by Billy Hin-Shing and Danny Lee. It was originally released in 1992 but has been restored and re-released. Let me tell you right now: this is not your typical serial killer movie. For one, there are some humorous parts to it even despite the gore. Dr. Lamb has a balanced ratio of giggles and gags throughout this 90 minutes film. […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: Short Films Short on Time but Not on Entertainment

Christina Ortega

One of the aspects of covering film festivals that I look forward to most is covering the short films that are shown. This year’s selection of shorts at the Fantasia International Film Festival did not disappoint. My friend and I now have new favorite directors to watch for and we have obscure lines we can quote from these shorts for a laugh. You should try to view these as well: Meat Friend Meat Friend made its Canadian premiere on July 15th. Written by Stephan Johanson and Izzy Lee (Lee also directed), this short is horror and comedy and fantasy and just a meaty good time. A young girl microwaves raw hamburger meat which causes it to become alive. It just isn’t any sentient being though, this Meat Friend has the spirit of an ex-con who loves to teach young Billie lessons he has learned from his life of crime. This […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: THE KILLER, Jang Hyuk Steers A Cold-Blooded, Action-Packed Thrillride!

Lee B. Golden III

Originally published August 2: After their success with The Swordsman, agreeably, it would only make sense that the respective star and director of that film would join forces for another venture. Thus, we have Choi Jae-hoon’s latest, The Killer, a ubiquitous production that has since gone on to see South Korean actor Jang Hyuk on a major stateside promotional tour for the film this summer. Invariably, the film does play on some familiar action movie tropes and even lends a jocular nod to a particular 2010 action thriller that fans of South Korean action would immediately recognize. It certainly doesn’t waste any time inviting a brief moment of our hero, Yi-gang (Jang), laying waste to a small group of hooligans in an action sequence that plays out in full way later into the film. Evidently, this all stems from the film’s key premise, which sees our protagonist eventually leading a […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: SHIN ULTRAMAN Delivers A Kaiju-Sized Good Time for Fans and Newcomers

Edward Orndorff

In the wide world of tokusatsu, there exist a small handful of properties who’s history and influence on the sub-genre, and pop culture, are undeniable. Of these films, few in Japan rise to the prominence of the sub-genre’s giants, and in the case of Ultraman, this is meant literally. A supremely important piece of media to Japanese pop culture , Ultraman brought together the scale of popular kaiju-based films with the episodic storytelling of a weekly show like Kamen Rider, to massive success. It’s my belief that Shin Ultraman represents this format in a way that will feel familiar to fans, while still an exciting and fairly easy to digest experience for people who might not be familiar with the Giant of Light. Shin Ultraman is a re-imagining of the original 1966 TV series penned by what might be the best known fan of the series, Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis […]

THE OFFER (MINISERIE) Review: The Struggling Making of a Classic

Mike Garcia

The Godfather is one of the largest most acclaimed films of all time, a long deserved praise that has lured moviegoers of different generations to the darkness of a movie screen to accept a cinematic lifechanging offer that they could not refuse. This year marks the 50th anniversary since the release of the film, and as all this type of movies that transcends the boundaries of entertainment, the stories and the legends surrounding the proccess of the making of these iconic features, are larger as the movies itself. Based on Albert S. Ruddy´s recollections of the chaotic making of The Godfather (producer of the film and also producer of the show) this latest Paramount+ limited series brings the audience through a ten-episodes journey to a far distant hollywood where movies were forged by crazy men with impossible visions that helped to build the romantic idea of Hollywood that has come […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: Takashi Koizumi’s THE PASS: LAST DAYS OF THE SAMURAI, An Exquisite Snapshot Of Tumultuous Japanese History

Lee B. Golden III

The late Ryotaro Shiba remains one of the most celebrated authors of his time, with his work standing front and center for many a film adaptation. Such is the case for his 1968 novel, Touge, adapted and directed for the big screen by Takashi Koizumi, who plies his trade once more – following a career that includes having worked as assistant director for the legendary Akira Kurosawa on films like Ran (1985) and Kagemusha (1980) – now with his sixth narrative feature, The Pass: Last Days Of The Samurai, under his belt. After 260 years of peace, Western colonial influence has shaken the atmosphere of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, compelling the 15th shogun, Yoshinobu (Higashide Masahiro) to restore imperial rule to help realign and unify Japan in 1867 – a decision that only proved to be problematic than expected with two pro-imperial influencers out of Satsuma province insisting that […]

STOWAWAY Review: Ruby Rose Hitches A Ride Less Thrilling

Lee B. Golden III

Stowaway streams exclusively on AMC+ beginning August 5. Declan Whitebloom’s feature debut brings the ambitious casting of Ruby Rose and Frank Grillo in Stowaway, a Die Hard-meets-Panic Room-on-a-boat thriller that centers on a party girl named Belle (Rose) who one day gets a phone call from a man named Meeser (Grillo), informing her of her father’s passing. Despite her own personal feelings about her father, she sets down to Mississippi to begrudgingly accept the assets he’s left her in his will, which is comprised of a large yacht. After meeting a barhop named Michael (Patrick Schwarzenegger), the two settled down for a trist. Little does Belle or her suitor know that her father’s yacht is about to become a battleground for survival when three men trespass onto the yacht with the intent of breaking into a secret safe and acquiring its alleged contents of $80 million dollars. Violence ensues and […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: CULT HERO, Unapologetic Genre Camp That Goes All-In

Lee B. Golden III

Dale Domazar (Ry Barrett) is a TV sensation. He’s known for his Clint Eastwood-style approach as a career “Cult Buster”, freeing people from captivity and pulling the veil off of false prophets, and doing so all in his first season as a television star. For all intents and purposes, he’s become a hit, and unfortunately, his success gets short-lived when his latest undercover operation results in the gruesome deaths of an entire cult and its leader. Fallen from grace and reduced to hustling for subpar gigs while living desolate in his trailer, it’s not until one evening when Dale gets a desperate phone call though his hotline that he finds a chance for redemption. Kallie (Liv Collins), a beleagured realtor struggling at her competitive job in addition to her troubled marriage, decides to induct her husband, Brad (Justin Bott) into Hope Acres, a getaway ranch for healing led by Master […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: Park Ri-Woong’s THE GIRL ON A BULLDOZER Piles On The Odds With Partial Catharsis

Lee B. Golden III

This year’s twentieth New York Asian Film Festival saw quite a few things happening, including for a few of its special guests this year – one of them them being actress Kim Hye-yoon, who has been on television for years leading up to her 2017 theatrical debut, Won Shin-yeon’s Memoir Of A Murderer. Her latest role in Park Ri-woong’s new drama, The Girl On A Bulldozer, has since earned her the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award for its premiere this summer at NYAFF following its world premiere at Busan last year, and its theatrical release in South Korea this past July. Directed from a script also by Park, the film introduces audiendes to Gu Hye-yoon (Kim Hye-yoon), a tough-as-nails 19 year-old who bares a distinguishable dragon tattoo on her arm, which she covers with a sleeve. She also lives with her much younger brother, Hye-jeok (Park Si-woo) and father […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: DEMIGOD: THE LEGEND BEGINS, Fantastic Wuxia Entertainment For A Different Medium

Lee B. Golden III

Chinese opera a la glove puppetry (a.k.a. “budaixi”) is nothing new if you’ve been exposed to this kind of entertainment in the last forty years or so. I’m a Westerner, so obviously when I caught wind of Thunderbolt Fantasy over on Crunchyroll, I was amazed at what I saw, which provides what little background knowledge I have to collect on the art, to which I now get to add Chris Huang Wen-Chang’s latest endevaor, Demigod: The Legend Begins. The film is a family effort out of Huang’s Pili International Multimedia and Puppetmotion Entertainment label with Huang Liang Hsun producing, as well as serving as screenwriter alongside He Yuan Yu, and featuring the work of late legendary puppeteer, Vincent Huang. For this, fans are invited to the story of Su-Huan Jen, who, upon embarking on a climb up one of the five mountains of Wulin, accidently interfering in a battle between […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: Kim Han-Min’s HANSAN: RISING DRAGON, Epic Period War Strategy Well-Played

Lee B. Golden III

Hansan: Rising Dragon screens on Thursday, July 28 as part of this year’s festivities at the New York Asian Film Festival. The film will release theatrically on July 29 from Well Go USA Entertainment. Setting the stage for future events, Kim Han-min’s Roaring Currents prequel, Hansan: Rising Dragon, brings us to the year 1592, during the Imjin War in which the naval fleets of Admiral Yi Sun-shin (Park Hae-il), and Japan’s Wakizaka (Byun Yo-han), engage in battles of warships and wits near the shores of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. The latest standstill sees the Japanese army strategizing around Yi’s latest implementation of turtle warships with dragonheads affixed at the bow that can shoot cannons. Wakizaka, slow-brewing his plans of attack, is quietly eager to seize momentum now that he is in the Lord Chancellor’s favor after two successful incursions with Japan’s army, with an eye to pave a way […]

BRING HIM BACK DEAD Review: Gary Daniels’ Newest Heist Thriller Is Dead On Arrival

Lee B. Golden III

There’s no easy way to dive into this review for Mark Savage’s newest film, Bring Him Back Dead. I say this, if only for the fact that trying to find the highs amid so many lows makes things all the more difficult in that it stars Gary Daniels, who has long been heralded as one of the most beloved action movie icons of the last thirty-years plus, with a career that ranges between working with the likes of Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Siu-Hung, Isaac Florentine, Albert Pyun, and eventually even Sylvester Stallone to name a few. Hell, the first Daniels film I saw growing up was Riot, and it was a shoe-in for me in the 90s as someone looking for the next thing to consume in the direct-to-video market to hold me down until the next big Van Damme or Seagal spectacle. To this, it’s unfortunate that I have […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: Life Hits Hard, But Can THE FIGHT MACHINE Hit Harder?…

Lee B. Golden III

Published July 26: Take a look at almost any film about boxing or sportfighting, and in almost every instance, you’ll find an underlying theme pertinent to the film’s character development through questions of “Why?” – “Why fight?”, “Why keep going?”, “Why hurt yourself?”. The best thing viewers can take away from this point on is how this aspect of the film gets broken down, further putting the pieces to the puzzle together to help answer the necessary questions, something that speaks inherently to a film like Sweet Karma and Spare Parts helmer Andrew Thomas Hunt‘s newest action drama, The Fight Machine. Hunt adapts a screenplay based on a novel written with co-screenwriter Craig Davison, which taps deep into the innerself as we explore the arcs of two protagonists living on opposite sides of the Niagra River – Paul (Greg Hovanessian), the rich and privileged son of wealthy Canadian winery owner […]

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THE SMOKE MASTER Review: A Bold, Comedic Experiment In Fighting As ‘High’ Art

Lee B. Golden III

Eight years of development and cultural edification, instilled enough to produce an independent kung fu feature that transcends the boundaries of comedy for a market not usually keen on controversy, now brings us to the forefront of the latest directing effort by debut film duo Augusto Soares and Andre Sigwalt with stoner martial arts romp, The Smoke Master. For this, we are invited to watch as an age-old vendetta begins to take shape for Daniel, (Thiago Stechinni) and his younger brother, Gabriel (Daniel Rocha) – prospective students of their surrogate father, Abel (Cleber Colombo) who is a Bagua Zhang master. The two routinely train together with other students at their local park where they are soon accosted by two thugs, and the harrassment only escalates further, until one day they brutally attack a classmate. The incident resulted in a near-fatal confrontation with the gang’s muscle bound leader, Caine (Tristan Aronovich), […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: Shinji Higuchi’s SHIN ULTRAMAN Is One Of The Biggest, Most Deserving Fanfilms Ever Made

Lee B. Golden III

There’s a huge, extensive legacy to consider with the Ultraman franchise as it dates back to 1966, and the question of whether or not a studio can remake a classic property. As a Westerner, I can certainly speak for Hollywood’s intake of IPs whether homegrown or born abroad, and it’s been a rocky ride. With a film like Shin Ultraman, however, I can only ascertain its general success from its current box office reception following its theatrical Japan release back in May, and so to that end, I can only dive into this review as someone relatively new-ish to the franchise apart from my past consumption of Ameritoku and learning of its Super Sentai Origins and other Showa-era materials. Alas, we get Shin Ultraman, the latest reteam from Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi following their pairing on Anno’s Evangelion projects among others. For both Anno and Higuchi, Shin Ultraman stands […]

ANITA DIRECTOR´S CUT Review: The Eternal Sunset of an Icon

Mike Garcia

The recent trend of bringing to the big screen the life of musical icons, was the perfect occasion to finally bring Anita Mui´s life into cinema. A long time project by producer Bill Kong (Anita´s close friend) who has finally found the perfect timing to turn this project into a reallity, finding the right people that could deliver a biopic that could be measured with the immensity of Anita Mui´s legacy. Bringing her back to life through the magic of the seventh art as that one in a lifetime artist, queen of canto pop and legend of cinema that transcends the boundaries of entertainment as an eternal myth. The film has been one of the big winners of the latest Hong Kong film awards, with five awards to its name, best new performer (Louise Wong), Best supporting actress (Fish Lew), Best costume and and make up design, best visual effects, […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: Eiji Uchida’s OFFBEAT COPS, Practice, Practice, Practice!

Lee B. Golden III

Offbeat Cops is an original story written and directed by Eiji Uchida for his fourteenth film to date. It stars Hiroshi Abe as Tsukasa Naruse, a divorcee and hard-boiled detective on the verge of catching the elusive leader of a phishing ring that targets elderly people, violently invades them at home and robs them of any money or personal belongings before leaving their victims for dead. When the film starts, he’s so close to getting his man that he can taste it, and will go to just about any lengths necessary to catch the culprit, even if it means abusing his authority with suspects. His maverick style of investigation, however, has also cost him his image as the three decades he’s spent being a detective has transformed him into an incorrigible colleague at the station, shoving his weight around and being insubordinate towards his seniors, intolerant of meetings and by-the-book […]

Fantasia XXVI Review: A Look At Wong Jing’s 1982 Action Adventure, MERCENARIES FROM HONG KONG

Lee B. Golden III

Undoubtedly, one of the most well-received aspects of being an avid Arrow Video collector nowadays means being exposured to rounds of cult classic titles long-adorned by certain niches. Specifically, we’re talking those of the Hong Kong cinema kind and folks especially fond of Arrow’s Shawscope 2K restorations of late, including and not limited to Wong Jing’s third directorial outing in his career with Ti Lung starrer, Mercenaries From Hong Kong. Ti Lung plays Lok Li, a hired killer working in Hong Kong already wanted for murdering the son of a crimeboss. Before he can escape to Thailand until the heat blows over, Lok gets enveloped into even more trouble at the behest of Ho Ying (Candice Yu), a wealthy tycoon’s daughter who claims she is being blackmailed by the assassin who allegedly murdered her father and stole a highly confidential audiotape. Assembling a team of six to retrieve the tape […]

NYAFF 2022 Review: It’s All Fun And Games Until A LESSON IN MURDER Gets Dangerously Personal

Lee B. Golden III

Anyone new to the work of director Kazuya Shiraishi might already be keen on his unabashed directing style. For those who haven’t seen some of his previous work like the more robust The Blood Of Wolves and it’s sequel, The Last Of The Wolves, are welcome to check the aforementioned titles out at a latter point sometime, with his latest, Lesson In Murder, able to serve as a bit of a soft opener into the chilling and gruesome. A slow-burn crime procedural in its entirety, we watch as Masaya Kakei (Kenshi Okada), a terse, meek young adult fresh into college just as he and his family are in mourning from the loss of his grandmother, is thrust into an intrinsic journey when he receives a letter from Yamato Haimura (Sadao Abe), his former childhood baker who is now incarcerated and on trial for torturing and murdering nearly two-dozen teenagers. Driven […]