Reviews

NYAFF Review: For The Destination In Bernard Rose’s SAMURAI MARATHON 1855, It’s All About The Journey

Lee B. Golden III

Times are-a-changin’ in director Bernard Rose’s jidaigeki debut, Samurai Marathon 1855, a 105-minute period epic based on Akihiro Dobashi’s 2014 novel with a story centered around Japan’s very first marathon. A beachfront diplomatic meet-up beteeen U.S. navy officer Commodore Perry (Danny Huston) and the Shogun’s Chief Minister, Ioki Suketora (Etsushi Toyokawa) offsets Rose’s epic tale which introduces us to Annaka village Lord Itakura (Hiroki Hasegawa), and his rebellious daughter, Princess Yukihime (Nana Komatsu), a talented artist with whom, he’s betrothing to Tsujimura (Mirai Moriyama), another of his loyal samurai, to help sustain his bloodline. We also meet a seemingly benign accountant bearing much more than meets the eye in Jinnai (Takeru Satoh), who happens to be secretly loyal to an underground clan of ninja, trained from boyhood and beholden to the shogun. Having long since been assigned to report on any anomalous activity from Annaka village, his mission finally takes […]

COLD BLOOD Review: A Word On Jean Reno’s Latest ‘Professional’ Semi-Redux

COLD BLOOD Review: A Word On Jean Reno’s Latest ‘Professional’ Semi-Redux

Lee B. Golden III

Frederic Petitjean’s latest attempt at the aging hitman genre ends pretty synonymously with a title like Cold Blood. Casting Jean Reno inherently serves fans of the actor familiar with his heyday as Leon – a more suited tragic hero type compared to the role he plays in this outing opposite actress Sarah Lind. Wintery North American landscapes are the backdrop of the film’s opening sequences with a woman speeding down a path in a snowmobile. Mortally wounded after losing control and crashing, she crawls upon a cabin whose owner approaches her, carefully observing the snow-driven woods behind her before escorting her inside and treating her wounds. Those events, however, are prologue to when the actual story begins – months earlier when our assassin, Henry, takes out a wealthy industrialist up close before a clean getaway, leaving nary a trace for detectives Kappa (Joe Anderson) and Davies (Ihor Ciszkewycz) to follow […]

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NYAFF Review: Kan Eguchi’s THE FABLE Lives Up To Its Name With Stellar Action And Comedic Gusto

Lee B. Golden III

A formidable highlight for this year’s festival circuit, Kan Eguchi’s action comedy, The Fable, delivers a steady balance of the silly with purposeful action, story development, and palpable drama to boot. Clocking in at two hours and some change, it’s a sizeable enough template with actor Junichi Okada to absorb himself into a role layered enough to keep interesting during the film’s quieter moments. Some action fans might take umbrage some at this given much of the oddball comedy sampled in the trailers thusfar; I do posit that a good, fair viewing would defintiely change some opinions for what the film delivers during its runtime. Concordantly, you get a performance from Okada that further stipulates his gravitas as an actor – particularly one who happens to be skilled in martial arts himself, and it definitely shows. Eguchi’s The Fable takes its cues from Katsuhisa Minami’s 2014 manga of the same […]

BEYOND THE LINE

BEYOND THE LINE Review: An Overly-Contemplative Shoestring War Epic That Goes Beyond Its Runtime

Lee B. Golden III

I hadn’t seen any of director Jason Mills’ films up to this point, but having just screened his latest film, Beyond The Line, I’m hard pressed to give this one a pass even to those most fond of war movies. An allied forces plane carrying British soliders is shot down, leaving officer Baker (Chris Walters), fending for himself and surrounded by Nazis. Hours later, a chance meeting with Summers (Jackson Berlin), an American solider gone rogue following the loss of his team, pits the two very different soliders in a reluctant partnership that ultimately becomes an introspective testament to what surviving will really take on the battlefield. We spot that difference almost instantly throughout our protagonists’ screentime with Baker more fearful of taking a life on the battlefield than Summers, who is ardently driven to kill as many Nazis as possible while he’s still armed and breathing. Moral quandaries aside, […]

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BETTER DAYS Review: A Transformative Ode To The Young And Disillusioned

Lee B. Golden III

Soulmate helmer Derek Tsang encapsulates the lives of two teenagers teetering on the brink of society in his second feature, Better Days, reuniting with actress Zhou Dongyu in a prime performance next to the addition of TFBoys band member, actor Jackson Yee. Far from an uplifting coming-of-age education drama of almost any kind, sophmore director Derek Tsang immediately puts this notion in the back seat within the first five minutes of Better Days. It hands the wheel over to the stoic cinema vérité of a young girl named Chen Nian (Zhou), unwittingly thrust into controversy and victimhood following the suicide of a fellow classmate. Pressures are already surmounting for Chen and her classmates in lieu of an upcoming series of placement exams that could determine her hopeful future career choices. In the midst of this, she is suddenly subject to questioning by police for covering up the body in moment […]

LEVEL UP Review: Faustus McGreeves Invites You To A Suburban Game Of Assassins And Patriots For The Uninitiated

Lee B. Golden III

Writer, producer and director Faustus McGreeves’ second feature, Level Up, serves as the kind of niche film that’s more geared toward a small filmgoing audience. Gamers, comic book and anime aficionados who aren’t filmically critical will get a bit of a kick out of McGreeves’ latest humble effort in Level Up, which might be more than can be said for folks otherwise invested. Kicking off with an air of political intrigue followed by a horde of goons chasing an agent with a mysterious package in the form of a nintendo game cartridge, the story eventually introduces Reid, a butcher who coaches basketball prodigy, Zeke (Reagan Hansen), on the side, and currently in the midst of a rough patch with violinist and wife, Harper. McGreeves makes a small appearance in the role of Reid’s neighbor, Randy, visibly troubled by something not so common or well-known. Randy informs Reid that he’ll be […]

WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN Review: Poetry And Penance Elevate Cheng Wei-Hao’s Latest With Grisly Resolve

Lee B. Golden III

Fans of acclaimed filmmaker Cheng Wei-hao’s recent work on The Tag-Along movies may take a liking to the subliminal poetry that coaleses in the grim, horrific millieu of his latest thriller, Who Killed Cock Robin. Hand-held cinematography goes hand-in-hand with Cheng’s vision as it takes a life of its own, loosely iterating its own incarnation of an old English poem with a narrative aptly suited for the film’s title; More than a murder mystery, Cheng unravels a tale of sex, greed and malfeasance drenched in a mystique of rainy weather and dour blue filters with a dark tint that almost never lets up. It all unfolds as we first meet Chi (Kaiser Chuang), an ambitious young journalist recently promoted at his job working for a newspaper. When his questionable practices become the lynchpin for a spate of layoffs, he sets off to make use of his time researching the origins […]

BLOOD CHOKE RETRIBUTION Review: A Brutal Paint-By-Numbers Revenge Thriller Short With A Serious Death Grip

Lee B. Golden III

Actor and filmmaker Michael Hoad has been in my purview for as long as I’ve followed a number of UK stunt talents. His latest push in the past few years since doing it up in Cannes for Jean Paul-Ly’s The Division and his own forthcoming sci-fi action proof, Soner Metin’s Insurrection, currently brings us Blood Choke Retribution, a project that clearly speaks to the fanbase it aims for going forward. Save for the similar-seeming revenge tropes, Hoad, Blood Choke Retribution is a pretty simple short story to follow telling of Jack, a former special forces soldier on early leave whose hometown arrival and reunion with the wife are sourly interrupted by the emergence of a burgeoning gang looking to escalate. Jack is rendered half-blind and beaten, and his wife raped and murdered in retaliation for Jack’s meddling; Blood Choke Retribution begins in the wake of that tragedy just as Jack […]

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MAD LORD: SAMURAI OF 1000 DEATHS Review: A Worthwhile Love Letter To Auteurs Of Yesteryear And Today

Lee B. Golden III

I’ve only ever seen a sizeable handful of classic chambara and jidaigeki films in my lifetime – imaginably there’s still a world of cinema out there I want to explore, but if there’s one thing I’m thankful for, it’s the inspiration of others. Independent filmmaker Samuel Smith has his – drawn directly into his latest short period drama, Mad Lord: Samurai Of 1000 Deaths, and with none other than legendary auteur Akira Kurosawa as a key reference to venture into his own take on Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth tale. The film takes an immediate entry into the foreboding millieu of the encampment of the Black Samurai Army whose warlord (Kristofer Kamiyasu) envisions himself being murdered in his own house by a warrior from the Red Samurai Army. Fearing the lord’s mental state is deteriorating, Sokushitsu (Gana Bayarsaikhan), his loyal geisha, treats him regularly with a serving of a kind of tea […]

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Review: In Lee Won-Tae’s THE GANGSTER, THE COP, THE DEVIL, Don Lee Gives ‘Em Hell!

Lee B. Golden III

South Korean actor Don Lee (a.k.a. Ma Dong-Seok) is back with first billing alongside Kim Moo-Yul and Kim Sung-Kyu in a crime tale intriguingly based on a true story with Lee Won-Tae’s The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil. The film premiered at Cannes and is now off to the races for its remaining festival circuitry, and with deserving ceremony given the talent that headlines this latest work from the filmmaker who debuted in 2017 with Cho Jin-Woong starrer, Man Of Will. Lee’s fellow co-star from Kang Yoon-Sung’s The Outlaws, actor Kim Sung-Kyu, bookends the movie title as the menacing serial killer whose gruesome, indiscriminate pile of bodies are plaguing the city. Lee stars as Jang Dong-Soo, a crimeboss mitigating his teetering underworld business dealings with other bosses whilst staving off the whimiscal and unwelcome escapades of Jung Tae-Seok, a relentless detective with a penchant for harassing gangsters for fun. Corruption […]

Scott Adkins in BOYKA: UNDISPUTED 4

A CASE FOR BETTER ACTION MOVIES: ….Or, Why We Don’t Deserve Another Sequel After BOYKA: UNDISPUTED IV [Reprint/Revisal]

Lee B. Golden III

Director Todor Chapkanov’s latest feature-length affair, Boyka: Undisputed 4, isn’t exactly the kind that would get the big screen treatment in North America. Elsewhere? Perhaps. Not so much here though, and it’s a shame as it was still a hope of mine that I shared as a theatergoer, albeit understandable with a limited number of screens at the least considering how rare it is to see martial arts movies these days, and of the caliber they bare in talent and content. I take this fact to mind in observing the career progression of martial arts star, actor Scott Adkins, once a stuntman and someone who has essentially woven himself into ample popularity as an action-capable actor, and with his biggest audience keen on major martial arts fanfare. It’s a succession that has not been easy – one plagued by the ever-continued proliferation of piracy that causes films like Adkins’s latest […]

DOMINO Review: De Palma’s Latest Crime Thriller Hinges On Espionage, Retribution And Meandering Romance

Lee B. Golden III

There’s nothing hugely enticing about Brian De Palma’s latest crime thriller, Domino, unless you’re the kind of person who’s into sordid love affairs as part of the story. Terrorism also serves pretty feasibly when it comes to crime storytelling and there’s no question De Palma certainly knows his way around the craft given his stellar resumè. I don’t really know De Palma’s politics and so I can only imagine how he might have felt about tackling this kind of particular story in today’s not-so-black-and-white atmosphere – often rife with absolutist mindsets about national security. Perhaps if you can suspend disbelief for 90 minutes then you might walk away from Domino feeling gratified with a taut, brutal thriller that isn’t afraid to gut-check you with not only violent, and often gory imagery, but such to serve as contextual in a way that teeters something pretty grimly close to reality. That is, […]

Review: BLINDSIDED: THE GAME Plays Fair And Firm To An Industry That Needs To Open Its Eyes Already [Reprint/Revisal]

Lee B. Golden III

Making shortfilms as prologues to subsequent longer-form projects is nothing new in film and television. It is equally delightful and surprising when it goes unannounced and, as expected, delivers tenfold on its intentions with the engaging audience. It wasn’t exactly foreseen last Spring when actor, martial artist, stuntman and filmmaker Eric Jacobus started garnering festival praise with twelve-minute narrative short, Blindsided. At twelve minutes, it achieves nearly everything you might expect or enjoy in a shortfilm or proof of concept right down to the ending without necessarily feeling baited to wait for more. Instead, it garners your furthered interest in the character and universe, and that is simply that. Going forward however, whatever said interest that entailed clearly took hold of the people at JB Productions, Jacobus’ shared independent film banner with industry stunt coordinator and Blindsided director Clayton Barber. Just over a year later and with the concerted efforts […]

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AVENGEMENT Review: Johnson’s Latest Delivers A Cathartic, Bone-Crushing Siege Drama You Can Drink To

Lee B. Golden III

Not too long since the release of Triple Threat, it now comes down to a matter of days as fans of action movie favorite, Scott Adkins await the release of his newest Jesse V. Johnson follow-up, Avengement. Far from anything pedestrian, the film is consistent with the continued pattern of work from Johnson whose directing career has proliferated favorably in the last few years with Adkins in his stewardship. Avengement is also something special, in a sense, kind of indicative of what Johnson has been trying to crank out in terms of what stories and roles could best flesh out more of Adkins as an actor past the fan-favored Boyka persona that largely crowns his career these days. Much ado was the fallout chatter from early test screenings of Avengement a few months back; It was talk that spotlit this latest outing from Johnson as the quintessential Adkins showcase for […]

BATTLE DRONE

Review: Mitch Gould’s Debut Sci-Fi, BATTLE DRONE Deploys With Stylish Indie Fare [Reprint/Revisal]

Lee B. Golden III

Fans of independent action cinema keen on following figures like stunt professionals Mitch Gould and Dan Southworth were rightly onto something since both appeared together in Isaac Florentine’s U.S. Seals 2: The Ultimate Force. Both have flourished in the years since then in their crafts behind the lens and thus attributing their work now seen in Gould’s solo directorial debut, Battle DRrone, finally hitting Netflix and serving up a worthy piece of entertainment for select streaming audiences and action fans alike. Bleach-blonde Louis Mandylor leads the sci-fi thriller as seasoned solider Rekker, a former military captain-turned-gun for hire whose dishonorable departure from the formalities of military service have all but re-calibrated his worldview and moral compass with more-than-enough shades of grey. His means of income enlists his employment with his own team of equally-skilled badass mercenaries to get off-the-radar jobs done for the CIA, no matter how dirty. Actress Dominique […]

LUC VAN TIEN: KUNG FU WARRIOR

Review: LUC VAN TIEN: KUNG FU WARRIOR Hustles Next-Generation Kung Fu Movie Muscle

Lee B. Golden III

Jackie Chan Stuntmen Association member and burgeoning action star, actor Andy Long Nguyen fulfilled a dream back in 2016 with the production of Vietnamese martial arts comedy, Lục Vân Tiên: Kung Fu Warrior. It’s a milestone achievement for Nguyen who has come a long way from his heyday in Pforzheim to becoming one of the most prolific and active members in his field today – a career path paved in part with inspiration from one of the genre’s greatest cinematic heroes. That notion gets extravagantly sprinkled throughout the film, shepherded by Hoang Phuc who shares numerous acting credits of his own including Clash, Hush and 2015 kung fu comedy, Kung Fu Pho. Intuitively, credits like these enough for an ample background for the kind of film Lục Vân Tiên: Kung Fu Warrior strives to be, albeit importantly with the aid of an inherently-devoted team of equally-aspiring stunt professionals – specifically […]

Maria (2019)

Review: Revenge Thriller MARIA Pulsates With The Emergence Of A New Action Heroine

Lee B. Golden III

You can certainly bet from a local perspective that a film like Pedring Lopez’s new thriller, Maria, has been a rarity in the Philippines for years. There’s been actioners, but not as much and certainly not to the same measure and scope as other productions, and gladly, there’s been a pretty visible sea change in recent years in that regard. For this, a film like Maria is a reasurring sign of better times ahead with much deserving ceremony. Maria begins with our titular lady assassin, donned in black and descending unto a quiet home as she lays waste to the perimeter of armed guards at every turn. Her name is Lily (Cristine Reyes), and she’s the killer of killers, a prime leading member of the Black Rose – enforcers of the De La Vega crime cartel. Her story fast-forwards seven years later when she’s far and apart from heyday as […]

Review: Neo-Western Crime Drama, SAVAGE, Paints By Numbers With Ample Chills And Suspense

Lee B. Golden III

If rural crime pics are your thing, you can expect plenty of this in writer and director Cui Siwei’s debut outing, Savage, produced by former John Woo cohort Terence Chang. Scenic mountainous views and wintry landscapes are the backdrop for key performances from a cast led by Chang Chen, and an otherwise taut and stylish feature endeavor. Toggling between two seperate moments, the film depicts the story of Wang, a cop contemplating life in a near-desolate town near Mt. Baekdu where life has ultimately slowed down. He otherwise shares a friendly rivalry with partner Han (Li Guangjie) over love interest, Dr. Sun (Ni Ni), who is set to transfer to Beijing. At the same time, a harrowing heist is underway highatop a snowy mountainous road, enacted by a trio of robbers led by Damao (Liao Fan), his kid brother, Ermao (Zhang Yicong), and sly sharpshooter, Zhou (Hu Jun). Wang is […]

SHADOW

Review: Zhang Yimou’s SHADOW Brims With A Climatic Equilibrium Of Bi-Colorful Wuxia Mastery

Lee B. Golden III

May 3 is gonna be a pretty stacked start of the weekend for regular moviegoers, and director Zhang Yimou’s latest success story, Shadow, will surely add to the pile. It’s certainly a redeeming effort following the director’s clumsy, albeit sizeable creature epic, The Great Wall, although you can certainly defer to its greater promise given all the current reviews that have run viral since its film festival run last year. If you’re like me and have been gripped by Zhang’s artillery of storytelling and visionary caliber in grand feats like Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower, you believe that Shadow far from disappoints. Penned by Zhang and co-writer Wei Li, Shadow is based on the ancient folkloric “Three Kingdoms” saga, prefaced with the story defeat of Pei kingdom at the hands of Yan. After losing Jing territory to the kingdom of Yan, Peiliang (Ryan Zheng), […]

Review: Brutal Environmental Drama, BLOOD & OIL, Digs Deep For Reverence And Resolve, But To What End?

Lee B. Golden III

Long-awaited since its heyday as Oloibiri, director Curtis Graham’s latest feature outing, Blood & Oil, has since come out of obscurity and onto a North American VoD multi-platform release from Vision Films. I don’t know the history of the production off the top of my head, so I’m just gonna go into my analysis here, and I definitely note this as a worthwhile viewing. Samantha Iwowo’s screenplay and Graham’s own cinematography lend a gritty, often harrowing and raw look into Blood & Oil; Several parts consequential war drama and other parts political thriller, the film toggles back-and-forth, frequenting black-and-white flashback sequences to depict the decades-long fallout from multi-national companies capitalizing on the siphoning of oil. In the course of this narrative setting, we meet Timpriye (Olu Jacobs), the village elder living with his son, Boname (Ifeanyi Williams). These two show up in the first five minutes of Blood & Oil […]