Reviews

WONDER WOMAN 1984 Review: Patty Jenkins’s Latest Is No Throwaway Sequel

Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman 1984 is now available in theaters and select IMAX screens wherever Covid-safe protocols allow it. The film is also on HBO Max streaming for the next several weeks at no extra cost for subscribers. As noted, this has been a major point of contention this month as studio backlash ensued behind Warner Bros. Pictures’ choice to go the day-and-date route, and the next few days will tell what commercial earnings will arise, although we already now know what most of the reactions are if the influx of negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes this weekend are any hint. If RT isn’t your metric, then that’s cool too. The film is totally recommendable to watch, but this push doesn’t come without some conditions. It does get a little cheesy and overlong in its story progression and build-up to the action, but the major plusses with Wonder Woman 1984 […]

ARMY OF ONE Review: Cut And Dry Action With A Strong, Suitable Outing For Its Star

Lee B. Golden III

Love and Monsters actress Ellen Hollman is expected to appear next year in the fourth to-be-titled installment of The Matrix franchise coming in 2021. Long before than does the actress leave her latest action footprint in the recent release of Stephen Durham’s latest thriller, the mundanely, albeit fittingly titled Army Of One which brandishes a rehashed story of revenge and rescue with a bit of pulp in its aim. The film is an otherwise watchable presentation that begins with two cops raiding a house with a kidnapping victim, with one of the cops, Dillon (Matt Passmore) ending up in a scuffle with the armed kidnappers and suffering a close call with a knife. That scene cuts to Dillon seemingly waking up from a nap with loving wife, Brenner (Hollman) at the wheel for their rural countryside escape from reality. Their couples’ getaway is a bit hit or miss when dealing […]

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EVERYTHING ‘MANDALORIAN’: Part I – A Look Back On Season One

Cathy LaFrance

So unless you’ve been living under a rock, or (GASP!) you don’t like Star Wars, you know that the hottest property in our favorite galaxy far, far away is The Mandalorian, a spin-off series chronicling the adventures of armored bounty hunter “Mando” Din Djarin and his ward, Grogu. Yes, Grogu. You know, The Child? Baby Yoda? Yeah, that one. The finale to season two dropped Dec. 18, so now we have time to parce the fine details provided us and ponder the future of our beloved, beskar-clad Dad and his crew before season three arrives at some point in 2021. For those who don’t have access to Disney+ (I have kids. Of course I have Disney+), allow me to offer you a primer on The Mandalorian, seasons 1 and 2 before we get to the heavy lifting. THE BASICS: The Mandalorian hearkens back the feel of what the original Star Wars: A New Hope movie […]

WARRIOR Series Review: Ep. 1 “The Itchy Onion” Soothes The Itch With World-Building Action And Intrigue

Kyle Wong

Now I have talked about this series on end and I think it’s time to talk about each episode and character on how it all culminated to an end on December 4, 2020. Let’s go back to 1971, Bruce Lee wrote up a concept known as “The Warrior”, a story where a martial artist from China comes to the American West. Lee wanted to pitch it to Warner Bros. but they chose not to move forward with the project. And yet the concept was released with David Carradine and titled “Kung Fu”. It was also said that Bruce Lee was not given credit and was not casted because of his accent and because the American audience is not ready for a Chinese main character. In 2015, Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon was contacted by Justin Lin and his company Perfect Storm Entertainment. Now Justin Lin has been a huge advocate of […]

SKYLINES Review: Barnburner Interstellar Action Sci-Fi That Delivers A Franchise Kick To The Senses

Lee B. Golden III

2020 is officially a banner year for hybrid sci-fi action and martial arts films between at least three distinct new film releases, one namely being Liam O’Donnell’s new sci-fi thriller, Skylin3s – aptly coined with the number three in its title. Long-billed as a crowning achievement for O’Donnell, the Skyline franchise serves thusfar as one of the more notable bookmarks for the fandom. The sequel’s festival premiere in 2016 with Beyond Skyline had audiences reveling with praise and galvanizing, much to the benefit of the 2010 inaugural, Skyline, which bodes more as hit-or-miss with some viewers. Point in fact, it would have been a risky bet to suggest the franchise could generate interest. O’Donnell, not to be outdone by the odds, came out of nowhere five years ago and dared to prove the naysayers different, and evidently, he did. How evident? Enter Skylin3s, third in line following directly from the […]

THE CURSE OF HOBBES HOUSE Review: Passable Zombie Thrills With A Cool Touch

Lee B. Golden III

Going into director Juliane Block’s new undead haunted house pic, The Curse Of Hobbes House, you would never guess that the film stood in part as an allegory for something more prevalent in the news these last few years. It’s certainly the mark of a formidable director – to be able to produce an escapist narrative genre piece with an underlying message that’s less obvious than suggestive. First and foremost, of course, comes how to establish the general framework and get the pace going. The first ten minutes embark on an animated prologue highlighting an ancient war between kings, one whose seizure of an old witcher’s house brings about a curse that lasts for generations. Fast forward to the present day and a week following a tragic plot twist that later introduces Jane (Mhairi Calvey), homeless and newly fired from her job, who gets summoned by a solicitor to arrive […]

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Now On Tubi: Coming-Of-Age Crime Drama BEAT Is A Full-Throttle Hit That Still Breaks Even

Lee B. Golden III

If at any given time prior to the new millenium you told me I’d be following my way down a rabbit hole of obscure Asian films, I would’ve been positively thrilled. It’s a reasonable enough trajectory considering by the late 90s I had grown weary of being a targeted consumer in a market for the same films by the same actors. Hence why you’d frequently see me in the Asian cinema section of the video store in the late 90s. Well into the new millennium my interests eventually landed me in a book store near Herald Square where I eventually became the owner of a number of Korean DVD imports, many of which were Region 3-locked and wouldn’t have been watchable were it not for my player’s All-Region functionality. Among the load I bought from that store upon my visits back then included a DVD copy of Kim Sung-su’s 1997 […]

MAX CLOUD Review: Middling Nostalgic Sci-Fi Thrills As Scott Adkins Lets Loose On Alien Scum

Lee B. Golden III

Anyone who’s endulged in sci-fi fandom in the last sixty or seventy years will be able to construe what director Martin Owen goes for with his latest endeavor, Max Cloud. The first look stills of the past year were enough to lend something of an idea as to the aesthetic, and the headlining addition of actor Scott Adkins does lend something to look forward to. Certainly, it’s a different kind of film for the relatively well-known martial arts star famously known for his more brooding performances in the Undisputed franchise and Jesse Johnson’s Avengement among other hits. Max Cloud reteams Owen with actress Sally Collet (Twist) who also co-stars, and with whom Owen penned the script. The opening title font, coloring, retrowave-style opening score by Liam and Steve McMellon, and characterization overall give leeway to the notion that the filmmakers took a page or two from Edgar Wright or even […]

Your Next Viewing: Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR Seizes Assassin Genre Expectations

Christina Ortega

You know a film is going to be good when it opens with a bloody assassination. Directed and written by Brandon Cronenberg, Possessor is the first sci-fi thriller of 2020 and honestly I think this movie would have to be in my top-five of the year. Like I said, it opens with a bloody assassination and then the assassin…kills themself. What? Scene change to the explanation: Tasya is an assassin for a company, but these aren’t some old-fashioned Kill Bill-type of assassinations where you pretend to be a person delivering flowers to off your target. No, the disguise is now thanks to technology: This company is able to use brain-implant technology that allows the assassins to take over someone’s body and make them assassinate people. Seriously. I love this idea of the technology which briefly reminded me of the film Source Code, except that in Possessor, the assassin can control […]

Your Next Viewing: Eric Schultz’s MINOR PREMISE Delivers Major Cognitive Thrills

Christina Ortega

Memories are tied to emotions. They can bring tears to your eyes, a laugh or smile to your lips, a stabbing pain of regret or loss to your heart. If you could control your memories, would you? Let’s take it further: if there were a program that could map your brain and control your memories and your brain functions in a way to change you, for the better, of course, would you choose that procedure? Utopia’s Minor Premise will have you thinking about all these questions and more. This film is New York filmmaker Eric Schultz’s feature film debut, and if this is setting the bar for what more he has to offer, I cannot wait to see what else he can do. Schultz is the director and helped to write it, along with Justin Moretto and Thomas Torrey. We first meet Ethan (Sathya Sridharan) as he is lecturing a […]

ARCHENEMY Review: An Abstract Superhero Drama Wrapped In Intrigue And Explosive, Gritty Crime Thrills

Lee B. Golden III

It’s an interesting time for superhero movies. Indeed you have the studio level tentpoles for Marvel, DC and the nascent Valiant label, but if you’re a genre director on the other hand, like Daniel Isn’t Real helmer Adam Egypt Mortimer, your eye is definitely on something more subversive and atypical like other films of late. Mortimer’s latest, Archenemy, marks the director’s latest stake in the nontraditional, casting Joe Manganiello as Max Fist, a superhero jettisoned to our planet after staving off a disaster that threatened his own just light years away. Powerless and rapidly aged by fifteen years due to the planet’s atmosphere, Max is fallen beyond far from grace; He’s homeless, derilect, resigned to a daily routine of public drunkenness and angry stupor when he’s not at the bar retelling the same story of how he came to be to patrons who don’t believe him, least of all the […]

TEARS OF NO REGRET Review: Sun Wukong Falls In Love And Disgrace To Save Mankind

Mike Garcia

Set 300 years after the unforgettable adventures of “Journey To The West”, this new reinvention of Sun Wukong as fictional character, introduce us The Monkey King being bewitched by the wraiths and condemned by the spirit of resentment to murder his mentor, the monk Tang Sanzang, but Wukong´s will and inner strentgth allows him to fight back, and get rid of the spell of the wraith that was consuming his soul. After discovering that behind the wraiths there´s a Goddess of heaven and earth, Wukong decides travel 300 years back in time, in order to save the monk and the goddess soul, in a battle to save mankind. Sun Wukong´s possibilities as fictional character are as endless as his own immortality and the Chinese entertainment market is squeezing them to the last consequences. This Fantasy adventure brings back the Monkey King in a fun and original new vision, where the […]

Your Next Viewing: THE EL DUCE TAPES, A Shock Rock Doc Strictly For The Engaged

Christina Ortega

What makes an artist successful? What makes a band great? My interest in music ranges from people being surprised that I like it to me being embarrassed for people to know that I like it and a lot of other genres in-between. So when our PR contact reached out to us and asked if we would like to view and review The El Duce Tapes, I volunteered. When a film is advertised about “footage never being seen…until now,” you have to jump on it, right? So what is the film about? Ryan Sexton followed the band The Mentors in the early 90’s and documented their art and the life of the lead singer, El Duce. The footage has now been released 25 years later and is full of interviews, behind the scenes shots, and clips of El Duce’s appearance on The Jerry Springer Show. I have to be honest and […]

Your Next Viewing: Barry Anderson’s RELENTLESS

Christina Ortega

This past holiday weekend, I found a 30 Rock marathon on television and I succumbed to the pull that is so strong on all long weekends: I made myself comfortable in my chair and I watched a lot of TV. No, this is not a 30 Rock review, but on one of the episodes, the characters are talking about the fear of choking to death alone and not being saved because they are single and living alone. At first, I laughed. But upon further reflection, there are any number of ways one could be severely injured at home and if you are living alone or are single, how long would it take someone to notice? How long would it take for help to arrive? What if it were something time-sensitive like choking and help never came? Does living alone increase one’s chances of dying alone? Or at the very least […]

Now Available: BARNEY BURMAN’S WILD BOAR Has Got The Bacon

Cathy LaFrance

Oscar-winning make-up artist Barney Burman has made his directorial feature debut with Barney Burman’s Wild Boar, a full-length version of his 2019 short based on the same premise. A group of geocaching friends set out to find a treasure belonging to entrepreneur and millionaire geocacher Roger Foster, missing since 2006. Their adventure takes them to a former nuclear test site, and we all know from countless 1950s science fiction films that this never ends well. The film is bookended by stop-motion animation clips, with the initial scenes showing pigs on the grounds of the nuclear testing site. It doesn’t take a nuclear scientist to figure out what happens from there. Mutated pig people with an appetite for human flesh think they’ve found their next meal with the lost geocachers. Engaged couple Scarlet Lamb (Augie Duke) and Garret Wolf Reed (Daniel Roebuck), along with Wolf’s brother Turtle (Jim Nieb) and friends […]

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Your Next Viewing: TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA

Christina Ortega

Ah, zombies. A staple of any horror fans diet. The fun thing about zombies is the range: they can be slow and steady, fast and violent, but no matter the kind of zombie, they are always entertaining. Our friends at Well Go USA gifted me with a copy of Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula before its official release and it is a much welcome addition to my zombie movie collection. What’s that? You haven’t seen Train to Busan? No worries. Although Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula is marketed as a sequel and references the zombie outbreak that began in the first film, there are no mentions of the previous films characters; it is actually considered to be a stand alone film. Taking place four years after the zombie virus has spread throughout South Korea, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula follows people in Hong Kong as they try to survive while […]

PLAN B: SCHEISS AÜF PLAN A Review: Reel Deal Action’s In-House Feature Debut Is A Paragon Of Martial Arts Action Cinema Excellence [Re-Print/Re-Edit]

Lee B. Golden III

My first venture into German martial arts action cinema was a groundbreaking low-budget 2005 feature from Johannes Jaeger titled Kampfansage: Der Letzte Schuler. It was a narrative extension from an earlier shortfilm – one among many which opened my eyes at the time to Europe’s talent pool of online film and stunt creatives in the early two-thousandsies, and it has been a continuing pleasure to see this millieu flourish and evolve from its humble beginnings, eventually sprouting groups like Reel Deal Action as early as 2012. Picturing firmly in this troupe are members Can Aydin, Cha-Lee Yoon, Phong Giang, Mike Moeller and Tanay Genco Ulgen, all of whom have since seen their careers grow and spawn greatness, and even a little acclaim to boot. It’s much deserved and anyone who has seen their projects online knows this as a matter of irrefutable fact whilst taking into account the progress we’ve […]

JIU JITSU Review: Logothetis’s New Martial Arts Sci-Fi Has Blockbuster Ambitions, Barely Gets A Grip

Lee B. Golden III

Best known for reimagining 1989’s Kickboxer with two storied back-to-back reboots, filmmaker Dimitri Logothetis segways into the comic book genre for the first time, adapting Acme Rocket Fuel’s in-house IP, Jiu Jitsu. Teeming with action-heavy talent per usual, the film rejoins Logothetis with Kickboxer Vengeance and Kickboxer Retaliation star Alain Moussi, having since escalated from stunt performance to achieving leading man status for the martial arts niche. It’s not too long before the film’s biggest players join the fray setting our story in Burma, namely Nicolas Cage who appears briefly in one of the film’s opening moments following an eruptive chase sequence opener that leaves Moussi’s character injured, unconscious, and floating in the water. Pulled to safety by a farm couple and escorted to a nearby Army base, our protagonist is treated, and sooner interrogated by Army intel officer Myra (Marie Avgeropoulos) who tries to mitigate whether or not she […]

FATMAN Review: Mel Gibson Serves The Fans With A Badass Santa With Neo-Western Thrills And Notable Satire

Lee B. Golden III

Imagining Santa Claus as anything more than a lighthearted, kid-friendly figurative Christmas fixture in movies goes quite the route from the latest work of directors Ian and Eshom Nelms. For this, it’s not every season that a film like Fatman comes around what with all the potboiler Holiday movies and the occassional reminder of Tim Allen in a fatsuit for that one film franchise that’s probably airing on some channel on TV or something or another. Alas, it’s 2020 and in the post-Deadpool era, while Fatman doesn’t go the full monty with its action and violence, it certainly spills enough of it to balance out the reverence in its message and overall fun throughout its execution. It’s a film that takes the Cris Cringle you and your parents know (depending on how old you are, of course) and refurbishes him as a hefty, salt and pepper-bearded, steely-eyed version of Santa […]

SAILOR CATS Review: A mad mission through time in search of the ultimate fun.

Mike Garcia

Three beautiful girls wearing sailor Moon costumes, travel through time to help Hattori Hanzo in a deadly mission that can change Japan´s history forever… Mad premise for a crazy adventure, in which all this craziness is where relies all its charming. Directed by Kanzo Matsuura back in 2011, this delightful madness keeps a perfect balance between action and comedy, having as one of its strong points, the action direction of Japanese stunt team ” Ral´C Action Group” leaded by Shigeki Hayase, having as final result, solid fight choreographies that makes all the performers look fierce and powerful screen fighters. As main difference with other similar productions, the film dispenses of filthy old abandoned warehouses, and displays a wide variety of outdoor scenarios that gives the flick a most colorful and lively set up, and a less goofy and cheap tone. The main trio is formed by Asami, Yuuki Kurata and […]