BrianDanaCamp Reviews

The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller (2002 TV Movie)

Fuller finally gets his due

[10/10 · 23 June 2023]

In 2002, a ninth addition was made to the eight-part series, "The Men Who Made the Movies," which originally ran on PBS in 1973 and offered career surveys and interviews with eight notable veteran Hollywood directors, three of whom were still working at the time, Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli. The others were King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra. The Time magazine critic and author of numerous film books, Richard Schickel, produced, directed and wrote the series. If I recall correctly, since I watched it all when it first ran, he also narrated it and conducted the interviews. When Turner Classic Movies licensed the series in 2001 and re-edited it with new, updated narration by Sydney Pollack, a decision was made to add a new episode devoted to longtime maverick director Sam Fuller, using an interview he gave late in life. (He died in 1997.) No credit is given to whoever conducted the interview. My immediate assumption is that it was Schickel, but I have no confirmation of that.

Fuller's great in the interview segments because he describes what he wanted to show on film, what kind of behavior he wanted to dramatize and what kinds of people these were. He tells us how he and the actors brought his ideas about human nature to life, with special attention to men's behavior and attitudes in the midst of combat, all backed up by plentiful film clips from the following films: I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949), THE STEEL HELMET (1951), FIXED BAYONETS (1952), PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953), RUN OF THE ARROW (1957), FORTY GUNS (1957), SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963), THE NAKED KISS (1964) and THE BIG RED ONE (1980).

He doesn't tell a great many "Hollywood" stories, since he was so far out of the mainstream, even at his peak, but he does relate a meeting he had with Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover over the line spoken by Richard Widmark's lowlife pickpocket in PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) as he's questioned by FBI agents, "Don't wave the flag at me."

Portrait: Orson Welles (1968 TV Movie)

Another great find for Welles fans

[7/10 · 5 March 2023]

While this 43-minute documentary for French TV could easily have been pared down to 30 minutes, if they'd cut out anything that didn't involve Welles himself in conversation or Jeanne Moreau, I'm still grateful for anything that gives us more footage of Welles. He's interviewed in French, with subtitles, and is clearly fluent in the language. Moreau is shot separately in a studio reciting quotes that could be applied to Welles, including one by Sartre, followed later in the film by her own feelings about Welles and the unique nature of an actor's relationship to a director. Since she worked with so many great directors, it's something she can certainly expound on at length. In fact, I'd love to see a feature documentary compiling interview footage with her from over the decades. She's brilliant! This was made for French television to coincide with the release in France of Welles' film starring himself and Moreau, THE IMMORTAL STORY (1968), and it's included as an extra on the Criterion Blu-ray of the film. Definitely a must for Welles fans.

One thing that bothered me, though, and this is true of so many European interviewers from that time (and American critics influenced by them!), is the tendency they have to make academic statements, to which Welles can only respond in terse, monosyllabic replies. Don't make statements to show off how much you know or how smart you are, just ask questions! We're here to see Welles share his knowledge and insight, not yours. Oh well...

The Addams Family: Morticia Joins the Ladies League (1964) Season 1, Episode 6

Pugsley and the Gorilla

[4 February 2023]

This episode should have been called "Pugsley and the Gorilla," since that's the focus of it. The Ladies League plays such a minuscule role in it, taking up less than four minutes of screen time, it shouldn't even have been included as a plot element. The gorilla performance, by George Barrows, is lively, clever and funny and dominates the action in the piece. Pugsley's initial interactions with it at the circus are hilarious. It's nice to see Pugsley get such a large chunk of screen time. Lurch's jealousy of the increasing role the gorilla takes in household chores after it has followed Pugsley home and been adopted by the family is also amusing and allows Lurch to play a greater role in the narrative as well. The Ladies League should have been left out of it entirely.

The Dazzling Life of Hokusai's Daughter (2017 TV Movie)

Concise portrait of a creative soul in Edo-era Japan

[8/10 · 28 August 2022]

"Kurara: The Dazzling Life of Hokusai's Daughter" (2017) is a two-part TV drama from NHK that covers over 30 years in the life of Oei Katsushika, daughter of the great Japanese woodblock print artist Hokusai (1760-1849), and tells it in a relatively short running time (ca. 75 min.). Oei worked as Hokusai's assistant, contributing to many of his paintings, along with a team of other staff who filled in the details on much of Hokusai's work, which constitute, arguably, the greatest body of Japanese art of the first half of the 19th century. There is a bit of romantic drama involving Zenjiro, a one-time assistant to Hokusai, who recognizes Oei's extraordinary talent and is able to discern which parts of Hokusai's paintings were done by her. He urges her to strike out on her own, but she continues to work by her father's side.

We see a lot of their actual work displayed on screen (borrowed from various collections), as well as scenes demonstrating the day-to-day process of conceiving, sketching and executing the work, both standalone paintings and woodblock prints. There is even a fascinating bit of history involving a Dutch client, Dr. Siebold, who commissions a series of "ranga" paintings (i.e. Western style) from Hokusai. The customer even visits the shop in one scene, at a time when Japan was officially "closed" to the west. As this scene shows, the Japanese knew a lot more about developments in the west at the time than Europeans or Americans did about Japan.

Oei is played by Aoi Miyazaki, who gained a lot of fans when she played one of the title characters in NANA (2005), one of a pair of 20-year-olds with the same name, but wildly different personalities, who separately strike out for Tokyo at the same time and wind up as best friends and roommates. Miyazaki perfectly embodied the more wide-eyed, effervescent and romantically gullible Nana, while pop star Mika Nakashima played the cooler, more sardonic, punk rock-styled Nana. Ryuhei Matsuda, who played the rock star boyfriend of the second Nana, is here in this TV movie as Zenjiro.

In this TV drama, Miyazaki plays an older, more worldly and self-aware character. She expertly conveys to the viewer what makes Oei tick and the sheer joy and excitement she gets from the act of painting and the discoveries of the properties of color, light and shadow and how to use them to make better paintings. She moves and reacts to people with a self-assurance and lack of formality that mark quite a contrast with our image of proper Japanese women from that time. It's quite refreshing.

There was an anime feature from 2015 called MISS HOKUSAI which takes place a few years earlier than the drama and has some parallel elements, but doesn't explore Oei's character with the depth this drama does. Still, it does have some lovely imagery and artwork and is worth seeing as a supplement to this.

NHK ran both parts of this drama on their streaming website. Part 1 came with a five-minute documentary segment in London showing Ms. Miyazaki visiting the British Museum, which was hosting a Hokusai exhibit at the time. She interviews Prof. Angus Lockyer, a lecturer on history at the University of London, who was a consultant for the exhibit and speaks fluent Japanese. She also interviews an unidentified owner of the Gallery of Japanese Art.

Yôkai Watch: the Movie: The Flying Whale and the Grand Adventure of the Double Worlds, Meow! (2016)

Intriguing mix of 2-D cartoon animation, live-action and CGI

[19 September 2021]

YÔKAI WATCH: THE MOVIE: THE FLYING WHALE AND THE GRAND ADVENTURE OF THE DOUBLE WORLDS, MEOW! (aka YO-KAI WATCH THE MOVIE: A WHALE OF TWO WORLDS, 2016) is the third movie spin-off of the anime TV series, "Yo-kai Watch," which originated in Japan in 2014 and has been airing in the U. S. in an English-dubbed version on the Disney XD cable channel. The movie offers 2-D cartoon human characters, their live-action counterparts, and anime "yokai" characters rendered in 2-D for the anime scenes and 3-D CGI for the live-action scenes. The novelty here is that some strange, initially inexplicable force transforms anime characters and their setting, Sakura New Town in Japan, into live-action counterparts and then back into anime characters. As a result, this is that rare anime film that shows human animated characters and their live-action counterparts, played by actors, and 2-D cartoon yokai characters and their 3-D CGI "live-action" counterparts, sometimes all in the same scene, making for one of the most unusual integrations of live-action and animation that this reviewer has ever seen

Like the TV series, the film focuses on young Keita (Nate in the English-dubbed version), a boy who has the rare gift of being able to see yokai, "a class of supernatural monsters and spirits in Japanese folklore," and has made friends with a number of them. It's fun watching Keita and six different yokai characters, in three separate locations, as they suddenly experience a change in themselves and their settings as everything shifts over from animation to live-action, after a flying blue whale passes overhead and emits a mysterious sound. Keita is stunned to realize that none of his family, friends or neighbors seem to react to the change at all. Live-action is, apparently, perfectly normal to them. It helps that the young actor portraying Keita in live-action, Ryoka Minamide, is so adept at reacting believably to the animated characters around him even though they wouldn't have been there when he was filming his role. The illusion is quite persuasive.

After Keita and his yokai companions, unseen by everyone else, explore the surrounding neighborhood and all its live-action wonders, they encounter a mystifying blue koala, dubbed by Keita "Koalanyan," who is somehow connected to the flying whale and also has the magical ability to turn the characters and their settings from anime to live-action and back again. Further investigation leads to the sad story of a teenaged girl in a hospital, a dancer whose promising career was cut short by injury and is connected to both the whale and the koala and is somehow responsible for all these strange goings-on. Keita watches in awe as the girl, Kanami (Minanmi Hamabe), flies up into the air, dancing freely, in both animated and live-action renditions, and is able to manipulate events below. The subsequent action includes a showdown at a fancy mall and amusement park with the whale suddenly turning into a "live-action" (CGI) monster visible to everyone, human and yokai alike, and forcing a dramatic confrontation with Keita and as many yokai fighting comrades as he can muster.

I watched this in Japanese with no translation, aided only by a partly-helpful plot synopsis in English found on the web, so I had to guess at certain plot and character developments. Even so, I enjoyed it quite a bit and can only hope that whichever company holds the license for U. S. distribution gets around to providing an edition of this for the English-speaking market.

I wrote about this film in more detail, with dozens of images from the film (some of which I posted in this page's Photo Gallery), on my blog, a link to which can be found when you click on "1 Critic review" at the top of this page.

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Frontier Theatre (1956) Season 1, Episode 23

Wyatt Earp: Patron of the Arts

[15 December 2020]

"The Frontier Theatre" offers some intriguing glimpses of performances by a traveling theatre troupe in the old west. The Harlow Players come to Wichita and we see lengthy segments from each of the three plays they perform at the town's Music Hall. The plays are: "Suffer Little Children," "Death to a King" (attributed to Christopher Marlowe), and "A Tale of Two Cities" (adapted from the Charles Dickens novel). The cowboys in the audience get drunk and take the melodramatic proceedings too seriously, physically assaulting poor Mr. Harlow (Mark Dana), who portrays the villain in the first two theatrical segments, forcing Marshal Earp to intervene. (Harlow has an easier time with the Dickens adaptation, in which he plays Sydney Carton.) Earlier, we'd seen Earp evict Jeff Pruitt (Glenn Strange), the manager of a "girlie" show, after the showgirls start rolling the drunken cowhands. Pruitt then plots his revenge. We don't get to see any of that show, risqué or not, although I'm sure they could have toned it down for television. Joan Freeman, future co-star of Elvis Presley, Don Knotts and the Three Stooges, plays Harlow's daughter Jeannie, who also acts in the plays.

Death Valley Days: Lola Montez (1955) Season 3, Episode 8

Classics Illustrated version of the life of Lola Montez

[9 October 2020]

This episode of "Death Valley Days" offers a thumbnail sketch of the life of Lola Montez, the Irish-Spanish entertainer who is seen here scandalizing Europe and taking up with royalty like King Ludwig I of Bavaria and cultural figures like Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and French author Victor Hugo before leaving for the U.S. and winding up married to a newspaper editor in a small gold rush town in California. The editor's jealousy gets the best of him, especially after two men, one a Baron and the other the nephew of Mr. Hugo, follow Lola to Grass Valley. The marriage ends and she's soon back on stage trying to revive her career before eventually winding up in New York working at an asylum under her real name, Eliza Gilbert, where she counsels "fallen women."

It's all done on a very low budget and uses stock footage to show us revolutions in Europe during her time there. I'm guessing the footage comes from European period films since they don't look like Hollywood to me. King Ludwig is played by Gabor Curtiz who happens to be the brother of the great Hollywood director Michael Curtiz (CASABLANCA). Franz Liszt has a scene with Lola and even sits down at the piano to play one of his pieces, but the actor who plays him is not identified in the IMDB cast list.

Lola had been a character in an earlier episode of Death Valley Days, "Lotta Crabtree," where she's seen in California mentoring the title child performer. Lola was played in that episode by Yvonne Cross. Here she's played by Paula Morgan, an actress who only has seven credits and is someone I'm otherwise unfamiliar with. She's not very good in the role. Watching this episode made me realize how great a big-budget biopic of Montez would have been in the 1950s if Ava Gardner had played the part. Alas, that was never to be. A big-budget European film, LOLA MONTES, did appear in 1955, the same year this episode aired on TV, and starred Martine Carol. It was Max Ophuls' last film and it's a bit abstract for my tastes, maintaining a curious distance from its title character throughout. I want a film where the character dominates, not the director's technique. Yvonne De Carlo once played Lola in a 1948 western called BLACK BART and she did her own dancing. I think that may just be the best portrayal of Lola I've yet seen. Rita Moreno played the character in an episode of "Tales of Wells Fargo," but it was for a standard stagecoach-under-attack-by Indians story.

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Peacemaker (1958) Season 4, Episode 2

Wyatt and Shotgun Gibbs vs. Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo

[11 June 2020]

This is one action-packed episode of the Wyatt Earp TV show as Curly Bill Brocius (William Phipps) and Johnny Ringo (Donald Murphy) lead their gang in a takeover of Dodge City while Earp (Hugh O'Brian) and Shotgun Gibbs (Morgan Woodward) are out of town. Earp and Gibbs are alerted and come rushing back--Earp on a railroad handcar, Gibbs on a mule--and the shooting starts and pretty much doesn't let up for the rest of the half-hour. This is why we loved half-hour black-and-white TV westerns so much when we were children and why they're so popular now on weekday afternoons on the Encore Western Channel.

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Mysterious Cowhand (1958) Season 4, Episode 5

Wyatt as a cowboy

[11 June 2020]

This exciting episode takes place away from Dodge City and entirely outdoors as Earp tracks down the man who stabbed his cousin to death and is among a group of cowboys leading a herd of cattle in Oklahoma. Earp pretends to be a drifting cowhand from Alabama and asks for a job but balks when assigned to help out the cantankerous cook and quickly gets into a fight with the cook. So the trail boss (Robert Anderson) hurriedly assigns Earp to work alongside some rough customers hired as "tail-enders" to keep the end of the herd from drifting or straggling. Earp is sure one of the murderers is among them. He handles himself very well and gets tough when he has to, which is pretty often, and we're graced with a lot of genuine cowboy lingo. Don C. Harvey plays Jumbo, one of the tail-enders, who makes quite an unlikely ally. He and Anderson are old hands at this kind of thing and they play it expertly. There is plenty of stock footage of cattle drives from earlier, more expensive westerns.

Star of the Giants (1968–1971)

"Star of the Giants" - Pioneering animated sports series

[12 March 2020]

"Star of the Giants" (Kyojin no Hoshi) is an animated series about Japanese baseball that premiered on Japanese TV on March 3, 1968 and ran for 182 episodes, ending its run on Sept. 18, 1971. The Clements/McCarthy "Anime Encyclopedia" declares it the very first sports-themed anime series. Its popularity spawned an endless succession of sports anime that continues to this day. The series is also significant for being the first animated contemporary drama without any supernatural, sci-fi or historical elements. It offered the Japanese TV industry-and the audience-solid proof that animation could be used to tell all kinds of stories in all kinds of genres and wasn't necessarily aimed at children. It also proved that audiences were willing to sit and watch a continuing animated story, week in and week out.

I watched two Japanese VHS tapes containing ten episodes of the series in Japanese with no subtitles. The first tape, containing eps. 53-56, is from the beginning of the second season, while the second tape, containing eps. 112-115 and 117-118, is from the third season. (I have no clue why ep. 116 was deliberately omitted from the tape.) In the first tape, Hoshi, the series' young protagonist, is a junior player with the Yomiuri Giants and is seen mostly in practice. He'd been trained since childhood by his father, a former baseball champ, and his joining the Giants is the beginning of a great career for the future star pitcher. In these episodes, he's still living with his parents.

In the second tape, Hoshi is already a star pitcher but he and his father are now bitter enemies. Hoshi, a southpaw, has perfected something called the "Diving Ball," a nearly lethal pitching technique that involves hurling the ball in such a manner that it heads right for the batter's face, forcing him to hold up the bat to defend himself, thus rendering his hit ineffectual. The pitch has such power that it often knocks the batter down even though he'd successfully deflected the ball. Hoshi's dad, Ittetsu, coaches a rival team and has trained a rival player to counter the Diving Ball and score hits off it. This player happens to be a black American named Armstrong who sees Hoshi as his enemy and taunts and snarls at him whenever they're on the same field. (Armstrong speaks Japanese.) It doesn't help matters that Hoshi is tortured by flashbacks of past batters getting hit and seriously injured by his Diving Ball pitches.

This is as overwrought as you can get. Hoshi is clearly disturbed by his father's behavior and has waking nightmares that pit him and his father, in the form of lions, against each other on an open field. Every time the scene moves into Hoshi's head, there is a sudden shift to stylized abstract backgrounds marked by jagged lines and dark colors. There are frequent flashbacks to his training and to bad encounters in previous games. Hoshi does not seem to be well liked and batters often taunt him from first base. They take baseball quite seriously in this series and there seems to be no time for banter, jokes or light-hearted moments. I'm also quite sure that the Diving Ball and taunts from first base would be strictly illegal in real baseball.

The character design is strong, with well-etched lines and distinct features for each major character. Which is important, since the series relies on frequent closeups to tell the story. While the eyes on the main characters are a little wider than Asian eyes would look, chiefly to facilitate more explicit displays of emotion, most of the Japanese characters are made to look Japanese from all other design standpoints. Only Hoshi's mother has light-colored (brown) hair. (She is also the only female character seen in the episodes available to me.) The characters are very emotional and the men cry and sweat a lot.

The series, based on a popular manga (comic book), is told realistically for the most part, aside from the extreme tactics used in the game and the reliance on stylized visuals to dramatize Hoshi's state of mind and depict certain baseball actions. For instance, when the ball is in motion after a pitcher's throw, it appears in a flattened or curved shape as it flies through the air. Also, when Armstrong is up at bat and decides to swing at the ball, his image is briefly replaced by a furious whirlwind, a visual cue that he's sure to hit the ball. There are abstract touches like this throughout, usually in moments of great baseball prowess or extreme emotion.

There are newspaper articles that have real photos in them. And in one TV newscast covering a baseball story, a few seconds of live-action horse racing footage is inserted, the meaning of which I couldn't grasp. In ep. 54, the team goes to Hawaii to play an American team and they win, 13-4. In ep. 56, Hoshi's father tells the story, seen in flashback, of a samurai ancestor who challenges a sword master repeatedly until the master relents and fights the challenger, killing him in one quick slash. I didn't quite get the moral of that story.

It's highly doubtful this classic series will ever get a subtitled release in the U.S. It's not the kind of baseball story that would appeal to American sports fans and its style of animation would strike young anime fans as old-fashioned. But I found it compelling for the intensity of its drama and the force of its imagery. It had some of the same appeal for me as another animated sports series I saw recently without subtitles, "Aim for the Ace" (Ace wo Nerae), about a female tennis player, which I've also reviewed here. I recommend this for other students of anime history, given its significance for the reasons outlined in the first paragraph.

Tales of Wells Fargo: Faster Gun (1958) Season 3, Episode 5

Tom Neal from DETOUR in one of his last acting jobs

[9/10 · 21 September 2019]

What a pleasant surprise to turn on "Tales of Wells Fargo" this afternoon (on the Encore Western Channel) and see legendary B-movie star Tom Neal (DETOUR) appear as outlaw Johnny Reno in "Faster Gun." In the opening scene he outdraws our hero Jim Hardie (Dale Robertson), putting Hardie in the humiliating position of having to take a desk job while he's recuperating from the gunshot Reno gave him. At some point, Hardie insists on going after Reno himself, but his boss makes him take along the man hired to replace him, former bounty hunter Jack Simmons (longtime western heavy Robert J. Wilke), who snarls at Hardie and constantly derides him for having "lost his nerve." They head down to El Paso where Reno has been robbing gold shipments thanks to inside info he's managed to glean from someone in the local El Paso office. (If only Al Roberts, Neal's character in DETOUR, had been this crafty.) Can Hardie get his groove back in time for the inevitable rematch? Stay tuned. I'm a big fan of "Tales of Wells Fargo" and I consider this one of the best episodes I've seen.

This was Neal's second-to-last acting job. He made one more TV appearance the following year (1959), in "Mike Hammer," which starred Darren McGavin.

Death Valley Days: The Deserters (1960) Season 9, Episode 30

Solid cast distinguishes unusual Civil War story

[19 September 2019]

In "The Deserters," a Season 9 episode of "Death Valley Days," Kenneth Tobey plays a Union Army Colonel who undertakes to capture five army deserters during the Civil War and bring them back to base in Arizona. After he gets the drop on them and ties them up, they are faced with a threat from a superior Confederate force as they occupy a small cul-de-sac and he has to trust them to help him fight them off. It's a low-budget production filmed almost entirely on a small interior set, but it's extremely well-acted with Tobey showing the kind of leadership skills he displayed nine years earlier in the classic sci-fi monster film, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), and the others playing varied character types. Dennis Patrick, later the beleaguered father of Susan Sarandon in JOE (1970), plays the embittered leader of the deserters. Dick Wilson, the future Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet paper fame, is the most timid and hesitant of the deserters. Veteran character actor Frank Richards plays an ex-stevedore from San Francisco who makes the mistake of challenging Tobey to a fight before he'll even think about cooperating. Barney Biro, one of the other deserters, later played a judge in several episodes of "Perry Mason." I watched this episode on the Encore Western Channel as part of the station's afternoon lineup of classic TV westerns.

Cheyenne: The Rebellion (1959) Season 4, Episode 3

Cheyenne gets caught up in the Mexican Revolution

[9/10 · 19 September 2019]

I've seen other episodes of "Cheyenne" that feature the title character on an adventure in Mexico, but "The Rebellion" (Season 4 / #3) may be the best. Cheyenne has to contend with a former friendly adversary, bandit Luis Cardenas (Rodolfo Acosta), who now leads the revolutionary forces in northern Mexico working with Benito Juarez in opposing the French-backed regime of Emperor Maximilian in the year 1867. Cheyenne has been assigned to escort an American agent who is captured early on by the French and, as he tries to determine the fate of the agent, seeks to stay as uninvolved as possible. However, he is eventually forced to confront the increasingly power-mad Cardenas. It all culminates in a plot against Juarez that only Cheyenne can thwart.

There's a strong cast of guest stars topped by Mexican actor Acosta, who has one of the juiciest roles in his long career of acting in Hollywood westerns, both big and small screen. Others in the cast include Faith Domergue, John Marley, Joe De Santis, Carlos Romero, Paul Dubov and, in the role of Juarez, Frank DeKova, who is quite good. There is occasional stock footage from the 1939 Warner Bros. feature, JUAREZ, which starred Paul Muni as Juarez. I watched this as part of the Encore Western Channel's afternoon lineup of TV westerns.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Silver Sacrifice (2019) Season 1, Episode 9

Focus on the new robot Ranger

[15 September 2019]

"Silver Sacrifice," which aired on Nickelodeon on Sept. 15, 2019, is the first new Power Rangers Beast Morphers episode in four-and-a-half months. At the end of the previous episode (#8: The Cybergate Opens"), two new Rangers were introduced. Nate (Abraham Rodriguez) transformed into one of them, unnamed but looking like a Gold Ranger, while a second, with Nate's DNA mixed with insect DNA in a robot body Nate had created under orders from the villains while in captivity, became a second new Ranger, dubbed "Steel." This episode focuses on Nate and Steel and their growing bond and the efforts of the villains to recapture Steel and use his body to contain the viral cybermenace, Evox, who is looking for a host to allow him to enter the human world.

I like the villains here, especially Blaze and Roxy, the avatars of two humans, now in comas, who had been slated to be among the original Beast Morpher team. One of them, Roxy, was even the girlfriend of Ravi, the Blue Ranger, which makes his battles with her particularly heart-wrenching. As avatars, they have the memories of Blaze and Roxy, with none of the emotions. It helps that they're played by two attractive actors (Colby Strong and Liana Ramirez) who add a bit of seductive flair to their roles. In one bit, as the two hold comic relief characters Ben (Cosme Flores) and Betty (Kristina Ho) hostage and demand that Steel be turned over to them, Roxy strokes Betty's hair and chants, "Tick, tock, tick, tock." She has quite a delicious smirk. The two represent a potentially more formidable team than the Rangers, who still haven't quite developed the cohesion that the three previous Ranger teams had. It's only the ninth episode, so there's time.

Death Valley Days: The Great Lounsberry Scoop (1960) Season 8, Episode 37

The making of newspaper history at the Bismarck Tribune

[10/10 · 7 August 2019]

The editor of a small-town newspaper in Dakota territory, Colonel Clement Lounsberry (Ron Hayes), has to turn down an offer to accompany General George Armstrong Custer (Duane Grey) on his expedition to suppress the Sioux in the spring of 1876 because of his wife's illness and assigns his assistant, Mark Kellogg (John Clarke), to cover the story. When word gets to Lounsberry of the massacre of Custer and all of his men at Little Big Horn, he has the Western Union telegrapher (Walter Sande) in Bismarck keep the line open to the office of the New York Herald and its publisher, James Gordon Bennett (Michael Emmet), despite the high cost of wire charges, until he can piece the whole story from Kellogg's last dispatch, Kellogg's recovered blood-stained diary, and interviews with wounded men from Major Reno's unit who witnessed Custer's movement into Little Big Horn and have arrived in Bismarck by riverboat. In New York, Bennett's editor, Miller (Gregg Barton), argues for waiting until confirmation arrives from the War Department, which initially denies the story. General Philip Sheridan (Maurice Manson) even makes an appearance. It's an incredibly suspenseful story and a vivid and electrifying tribute to the journalists involved. "Death Valley Days" excelled at sharply focused accounts like this. I saw this when it played on Starz Encore's Western Channel.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Beasts Unleashed (2019) Season 1, Episode 1

New Power Rangers season starts off with a bang

[10/10 · 2 March 2019]

"Beasts Unleashed" is the premiere episode of "Power Rangers Beast Morphers," the 2019 PR season. It dispenses with the high school antics of the previous "Ninja Steel" seasons and plunges right into an epic sci-fi action plot involving a revolutionary new energy source that is being tested to power the grid for the city of Coral Harbor. The episode is fast-paced, full of action and laced with humor. I found the young adult Ranger characters quite engaging and the adult authority figures confident and compelling. The foundation is being laid for an excellent season.

At Grid Battleforce, the entity set up to provide high-tech security for the power grid, three young people are selected to become the Power Ranger team that will protect the energy source, called Morph X, but when a virus infects the system during the morphing process, disaster ensues and two young do-gooders on the scene rush in to help. In a clever turn of events, they wind up becoming Power Rangers themselves, along with one of the original designated Rangers, making a three-person team of Red, Blue and Yellow Rangers. They also engage in some spectacular martial arts fight scenes with the "avatars" created by the virus during the morphing process. It's all very exciting.

There is an excellent dramatic music score by Matt McGuire, who gets credited in the opening, the first time I've seen a prominent music credit in the franchise since the days when Shuki Levy was in charge of composing back in the 1990s.

The series is based on the 2012 Super Sentai season, "Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters," a show I like a lot. This is the first time a series that was passed over in the previous Power Rangers progression has been adapted. (This gives me hope that "Ressha Sentai Toqger," from 2014, my favorite sentai season, will eventually get adapted for Power Rangers.) As far as I could tell, there was no Japanese footage in the first episode of "Beast Morphers," although that is not uncommon for season premiere episodes in the PR franchise. I eagerly await the next new episode.

All Men Are Brothers (1975)

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS - Spectacular sequel to THE WATER MARGIN

[8/10 · 12 February 2019]

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS (1973), co-directed by Chang Cheh and Wu Ma, is a follow-up to Chang's all-star spectacle from the year before, THE WATER MARGIN (aka SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON), based on the classic Chinese text of that title (also available in an English translation under the title, "Outlaws of the Marsh"). These are just two of many Shaw Bros. productions that have been adapted from different chapters of this sprawling epic tale. This one begins after the 108 Bandits of Liangshan Mountain have freed nobleman Lu Jun Yi (Tetsuro Tanba) from captivity, as seen in the previous film, and installed him as their second-in-command. They are now called upon to suppress a rebel prince named Fang La (Zhu Mu), who is seeking to overthrow the Emperor, and have been promised an imperial pardon should they succeed. Seven of the bandits, six men and one woman, are chosen to enter Fang La's stronghold at Hangchow and work undercover to learn his defenses and open the water gates at the appointed time so that the Liangshan boats can enter and attack the fortress. The enemy is alerted quite early to the presence of the spies and fights break out on a regular basis as Fang La's generals try to capture the bandits and thwart their efforts.

It's pretty much nonstop action from start to finish, with some of the most intricate fight scenes I've yet seen in a Shaw production. At one point, Shi Jin (Chen Kuan Tai) takes on dozens of enemy soldiers in a courtyard singlehanded. The reckless and short-tempered Black Whirlwind (Fan Mei-Sheng) was quite a lethal combatant in THE WATER MARGIN, but he's even more ferocious here, wielding his battle axes to bloody effect in one encounter after another as he cuts a swath through the onslaught of attacking soldiers, who are dwarfed by his massive presence. Also on hand are David Chiang, Wang Chung, Danny Lee, Wong Kwong Yue and the one female in the group, Yue Fung, as Sun the Witch. The rebel prince and his cadre of generals are quite a crafty and formidable group of foes, so the suspense level is high. The film makes ample use of the Shaw studio's massive backlot built for period epics. The music score is much better than the patchwork collection of random, sometimes dissonant, cues used in THE WATER MARGIN.

I had written a review of this film for IMDB back in 2001 after seeing a VHS copy of its shortened, English-dubbed version, SEVEN SOLDIERS OF KUNG FU. After re-watching the film on Celestial's R3 DVD this week for the first time in nearly ten years, I came here to check my original review, but it seemed to have disappeared from this site, so I wrote this one, especially since my original review was mixed and, I believe, somewhat unfair to the film considering the copy I had to view back then. Well, the original review is back on site now, complete with a positive addendum I added in 2010. So now I have two reviews of it here. In any case, I highly recommend the film.

The Land of Many Perfumes (1968)

4th in a series of "Monkey King" films from Shaw Bros.

[8/10 · 29 December 2018]

THE LAND OF MANY PERFUMES (1968) followed three earlier films produced by Hong Kong's Shaw Bros. studio and based on parts of the Chinese epic, "Journey to the West": THE MONKEY GOES WEST, PRINCESS IRON FAN, and CAVE OF THE SILKEN WEB (1966-67). This film follows its four protagonists, Xuan Zang, the Tang monk (Ho Fan), Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King (Chow Lung-Cheung), and Pigsy (Pang Pang) and Sandy (Tien Shun), a pig demon and river demon who have both been reformed, as they continue their journey west from China to India to obtain a set of Buddhist scriptures to bring back to China. The film is a delightful fantasy adventure from start to finish, with lots of comic scenes, inventive special effects, and dozens of beautiful actresses as the antagonists faced by the party of travelers.

The chief obstacles here are three sets of gorgeous women, two of which have supernatural powers, just like the Monk's three companions. The four Devil Sisters and their competitors, Snake Spirit and Scorpion Spirit, all have their own ulterior motives for capturing the monk and take on different forms in order to trick each other and the Monk and his party. The Devil Sisters take on the forms of the Monk and his three companions when they arrive at the Land of Many Perfumes, an all-female kingdom that is overjoyed to see a man at last. The monk impostor agrees to marry the Empress (Li Hsiang-Chun) when he returns and he and his party soon leave. When the real monk and his companions arrive, the Empress demands he marry her and soon her daughter, the Princess (Fang Ying), wants to marry him as well. Eventually, the Monkey King figures out who's responsible for all the mischief and undertakes a battle royale against the female demons, using every trick of sorcery in his repertoire, aided by Pigsy and Sandy.

There are many exciting scenes in this, such as the Monkey King's battle to overcome Ru Yi, the Fairy God, who has taken over the Monkey King's domain, at the Spirit Sisters' urging, and imprisoned all of his monkey subjects. Wu Kong eventually earns Ru Yi's undying gratitude, which comes in handy late in the film. When the Monkey King takes on the Devil Sisters, he uses his powers over nature to uproot trees and mountains and rivers and consign them to an amusing fate. At one point, Pigsy, basically a pig who walks on two legs and speaks, takes on the form of the monk so he can gain entrance to the Empress' boudoir and attract the attention of all her handmaidens. His distinctly un-monk-like behavior constantly gets him into trouble and provides plenty of comic relief. (The rotund actor, Pang Pang, is a remarkable physical comedian.)

The special effects may seem crude by today's standards, but they're done with so much cleverness and imagination that I enjoyed every scene with them. Granted, you can do the same things so easily with CGI these days, but there's something about lab-created optical effects and hand-crafted real-time on-set mechanical effects that make these films look so unique and give them a vivid sense of Chinese mythical fantasy that you wouldn't find in any other country's special effects films from 50 years ago. Also, there is a charming animated credits sequence.

For the record, I have reviewed two of the previous Monkey King films, PRINCESS IRON FAN and CAVE OF SILKEN WEB, on this site also. Actress Fang Ying, who plays the Princess in this film, also starred in the Taiwan-set melodrama, MIST OVER DREAM LAKE, which I've also reviewed, the same year. She's quite an unsung Shaw Bros. talent and left the studio much too soon.

Xin ti xiao yin yuan (1975)

LOVER'S DESTINY: All-star cast shines in historical drama

[8/10 · 12 September 2018]

LOVER'S DESTINY (1975) is a romantic melodrama set in 1920s China produced by Hong Kong's Shaw Bros. studio and directed by the studio's greatest stylist, Chor Yuen. Using the studio's lavish sets, he creates an insular world for its large cast of compelling characters, mixing his idealized depictions of beauty and romance with sudden, disruptive violence and tragedy. And he employs many of the studio's top-ranked performers. Its central character is Jia-Shu (Tsung Hua), a young and handsome student from a rich family who sees a sweet, shy singer, Feng-Shian (Ching Li), perform in a nightclub and falls in love with her to the point of paying for her schooling. His family is trying to push him into a marriage with Li-Shia (Li Ching), the beautiful, pampered daughter of the local Treasury official. He meets and comes to the aid of a street performer (Chen Kuan Tai) and his lovely sister, Xiu Ziu (Shih Szu). So he winds up with three gorgeous women from different classes all in love with him. And he proves his worth to each of them. For instance, when a fancy party for Li-Shia is interrupted by the arrival of brutal warlord Generalissimo Zhang (Stanley Fung) who takes a quick interest in Li-Shia, Jia-Shu boldly strides forth and insists it's time for his dance with Li-Shia, breaking the impasse and allowing Zhang to back off without losing face. Things take a turn for the worse when Jia-Shu is called away to his hometown to care for his ailing mother. When he returns, he finds that the Generalissimo has taken a liking to Feng-Shian and forced her to be his Sixth Mistress by threatening the lives of her mother and uncle. At first Jia-Shu feels betrayed, but gradually learns the full scope of Zhang's cruelty and enlists Li-Shia and the kung fu-fighting family of street performers to help him rescue Feng-Shian.

Each of the three main females in the film is a distinct character, different from each other in many ways, but united in their love and devotion to Jia-Shu. I've seen each of them, Ching Li, Shih Szu and Li Ching, in many films and never fail to be newly amazed at their versatility as actresses and their extraordinary screen presence and charisma. There isn't a single false note from any of them. I was also impressed with Stanley Fung as the capricious warlord. I know him mostly as a comic actor in the Lucky Stars films of the 1980s with Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, where he more than holds his own with the best of Hong Kong's comic talent, so it's always a revelation when I see him in a dramatic role from earlier in his career. As Generalissimo Zhang, he avoids stereotypical villain mannerisms and plays him as a former peasant who has attained real power for the first time in his life and is not always sure how far he can go and has a key aide to advise him. He knows what he wants, but he's insecure and impetuous. You can see his mind slowly working every time he's faced with a new challenge. He's a vicious killer and we feel no sympathy for him, but he's also a human being. It's a harsh, but honest portrayal. The action finale allows kung fu stars Chen Kuan Tai and Shih Szu to show their considerable skills.

The film is a remake of the epic Cathay drama, THE STORY OF THREE LOVES, starring Grace Chang, which was released in two parts in 1964.

3 Young Samurai (1961)

Unusual samurai tale with strong romantic elements

[18 May 2018]

THREE YOUNG SAMURAI (1961) is one of the oddest samurai films I've ever seen, but also a quite compelling one. Although it's ostensibly about three male friends who left their village to go off to war together, it places greater emphasis on the women who enter their lives. The three young fighters wind up on the wrong side of a battle in 16th century Japan and go off on their separate ways after their side, the Tokugawas, is forced to surrender to the opposing Lord Takeda. Back home, all three loved the same woman, Miyuki (Mieko Kondo), but she loves only Hachiro (Shintaro Katsu), who is captured on the battlefield and winds up as vassal of the mysterious Lady Arari (Yoshie Mizutani) after he refuses to make a formal surrender to Takeda. Sanzo (Gen Mitamura) is abducted by a gang of bandits, but their female leader, Hime (Kyoko Enami), takes a liking to him and makes him her lover and co-leader of the gang. Poor Kitota (Katsuhiko Kobayashi) pines consistently for Miyuki and vows to kill Hachiro for abandoning her. He eventually has quite a knockdown, drag-out brawl with Hachiro that's shot and staged with astonishing brutality. It's rough and messy, like a real fight. The characters' paths continually crisscross and they're never all that far geographically from each other as the tide of war slowly changes in the Tokugawas' favor, jeopardizing everyone still in the Takeda camp.

The narrative doesn't always flow in a linear fashion and we don't always know where characters are in relation to each other at a given time. Also, since we never see the three men, Hachiro, Sanzo, and Kitota, in their pre-war friendship, we have little investment in their relations with each other. Hachiro comes off as the most admirable since he takes control of his destiny and makes the kind of firm commitments to action that the others can't seem to make. Of the women, Miyuki is the most passive and given to frequent tears and we can't really blame Hachiro for falling for Arari or Sanzo for taking up with Hime. Arari and Hime are both assertive, proactive, beautiful, and in charge of their fates. They're easily the strongest characters in the film, although Hachiro eventually proves his true worth. The relationships with the women characters are the most important ones in the film, which is quite rare for a samurai film.

The film was produced by the Daiei Studio, which certainly knew how to make this kind of film well. It's beautifully shot in black-and-white and widescreen, with a mix of spectacular location shots and large expertly-crafted studio sets. There were some nighttime exterior scenes where I wasn't sure if it was shot outdoors or on a soundstage. Star Shintaro Katsu would go on the next year to headline the studio's long-running Zatoichi series of films. The more I see of his earlier, pre-Zatoichi work, such as this, THE LOYAL 47 RONIN (1958), and KOJIRO'S TURNING SWALLOW CUT (1961), the more I prefer it. (I have reviewed both of those films on IMDB.) His most expressive feature is his eyes, something the blind swordsman hides from us. He was also quite handsome and charismatic when not in Zatoichi mode. I wasn't familiar with the rest of the cast, other than Yoshie Mizutani (Arari), whom I've also seen in KILLING IN YOSHIWARA (1960) and SLEEPY EYES OF DEATH: MASK OF THE PRINCESS (1966), neither of which are listed in her IMDB filmography. The director of this film, Kazuo Mori, also directed a number of exemplary yakuza, ninja and samurai films, including SAMURAI VENDETTA, JIROCHO FUJI, SHINOBI NO MONO 3, and three Zatoichi films.

Duel of Blood and Sand (1963)

When only one samurai is needed ...

[9/10 · 14 May 2018]

DUEL OF BLOOD AND SAND (1963) is clearly a reworking of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), except that it involves only one samurai, a swaggering, charismatic figure named Yajuro Inaba, played by samurai star Ryutaro Otomo, the closest actor I've yet seen to a Japanese John Wayne. (Interestingly, Otomo's film career was about as long as Wayne's film career, both just shy of 50 years.) On the run after breaking with his corrupt clan, Yajuro rides off into the countryside and enters a remote town of farmers and woodcutters (described in the subtitles as "lumberjacks"), only to find a woman being assaulted by a bandit while the men cower behind closed doors. Yajuro kills the bandit but is then spurned by the town which now fears retribution by the dead man's gang, which essentially controls the town. Only a lone prostitute (Satomi Oka) offers aid and comfort to him. Eventually, he forcefully persuades the farmers to stand up for themselves and defend their town and their women. Complicating matters is the looming presence of four expert swordsmen, one of whom is Yajuro's best friend, sent by the clan to kill him. Can Yajuro postpone their showdown with him and recruit them to help out against the coming bandit attack?

Shot in black-and-white, the film is beautifully photographed, fast-paced, expertly directed and well-acted. It's two hours shorter than SEVEN SAMURAI since it has six fewer characters to introduce. THE SEVEN SAMURAI is a masterpiece, of course, but when you want a simpler, less demanding version and can spare only 90 minutes, this may be the easier choice. Director Sadatsugu Matsuda directed tons of movies like this in the 1950s and '60s, including VANQUISHED FOES, PORT OF HONOR, ROAD OF CHIVALRY, TANGE SAZEN AND THE PRINCESS, and CRIMSON BAT, THE BLIND SWORDSWOMAN, two of which (PORT and ROAD) I've reviewed here already. Every one I've seen so far is a winner.

Kojiro's Turning Swallow Cut (1961)

A rare look at the youthful Kojiro Sasaki

[9/10 · 20 April 2018]

KOJIRO'S TURNING SWALLOW CUT (1961) stars Shintaro Katsu (of Zatoichi fame) as the young swordsman, Kojiro Sasaki, who would go on to gain eternal fame for his 1612 duel with Musashi Miyamoto, a legendary swordfight that has been the subject of countless Japanese movies and TV shows. Since Miyamoto won that duel, far fewer productions have been devoted to his opponent. This is, in fact, only the second film I've ever seen that focuses on Sasaki. (The other is Hiroshi Inagaki's SASAKI KOJIRO, from 1967, a remake of an earlier film by that title by the same director.) Miyamoto is never mentioned in this version, which focuses on incidents early in the young Sasaki's training.

The film sets up an array of fascinating characters, all with different and sometimes conflicting agendas, and has them thrown together by fate, forcing them to work their way through and try to come out unscathed. The key plot thread is Sasaki's insistence on becoming a student of wandering sword master Seigen Toda and the hoops he has to jump through both before and after being accepted. Two women add to the intrigue and complicate things for Sasaki, as does the handsome, stately fiancé of one of the women, one Sir Tamaramaru, a Noh actor with martial arts skills who gets to display both talents in a splendid performance scene. Sasaki and Tamaramaru have philosophical discussions about the way of the sword and weigh the benefits of working for a powerful lord, as Tamaramaru does, versus going one's own way, as Sasaki does. Certain characters are constantly pressured into sword duels with others, which tend not to end well for those doing the pressuring. Sasaki's youthful idealism and romantic notions take quite a few hits in the course of the film, including in his exchange with a geisha who offers up a sharp, sardonic sketch of Tamaramaru's character.

The film is beautifully shot in black-and-white, mostly on location, tightly edited, intelligently written and wonderfully acted by a cast of players who were largely unfamiliar to me, aside from Katsu. This is another one of those undiscovered gems from a forgotten corner of Japanese film history that keep popping up for me in unexpected places. While it's not quite the work of art that YOJIMBO, SAMURAI REBELLION, HARAKIRI, GOYOKIN, or Inagaki's SAMURAI trilogy are considered to be, it is a good melodrama, plunging headfirst into the lives of its characters, keeping us gripped and engaged throughout the concise 80-minute running time. It may not make sweeping statements about the human condition or the Japanese character or social conditions of the time, but it does offer a vivid snapshot of an early step in Sasaki's venture into history and begins to compensate for the less savory portrayals of him seen in so many films about his opponent. It makes me wonder how many more such films about Sasaki exist and are waiting to be found. I've not seen any other films by this director, who made only eleven films per IMDB, this one being the tenth.

A Yokohama Yankee (1955)

A Hollywood cartoon set in Japan and made ten years after WWII

[20 March 2018]

In the mid-1950s, Hollywood was discovering Japan as a source of new and intriguing tales of culture clash and interracial romance in films like JAPANESE WAR BRIDE, THREE STRIPES IN THE SUN, HOUSE OF BAMBOO, TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON and SAYONARA, as Japan and the U.S. worked together on overcoming wartime enmity and forging a new and powerful alliance. We didn't see a lot of this reflected in the animated cartoons coming out in those years, except for this one from Terrytoons, "A Yokohama Yankee" (1955). Set in Japan, it's a standard cartoon insect tale of a bullying spider trying to force himself on a delicate Japanese butterfly until an American fly, dressed as a sailor, intervenes, but it opens with a beautifully animated and designed sequence showing the butterfly preparing herself for her wedding in traditional garb with the help of an army of eager insect helpers, accompanied by a lovely song, sung by a female soloist, on the soundtrack. The song lyrics take dramatic license by placing Yokohama at the foot of "Fujiyama" (Mount Fuji), which is not at all close, geographically, but at least it rhymes. And there's something of a surprise locale at the end. To my eyes, at least, the characterizations took great care to avoid stereotyping. I found this on YouTube along with many additional Terrytoon shorts.

There was a series of later Terrytoons, made from 1959 to 1963, that were set in Japan and featured a mouse named Hashimoto. Many of them were directed by a Japanese-American director named Bob Kuwahara. There was a sincere attempt in these cartoons to offer a respectful portrayal of Japanese culture. These are definitely worth checking out also.

Power Rangers Ninja Steel (2017–2018)

A lighter-hearted, more kid-friendly Power Rangers season

[29 December 2017]

I watched all 22 episodes of "Power Rangers Ninja Steel" and while I enjoyed them as they were broadcast on Nickelodeon and re-watched most of them, I can't say it's a particularly good season, especially in the wake of the last two cycles (Megaforce, 2013-2014, and Dino Charge, 2015-2016), which turned out to encompass four exemplary seasons, arguably the best since "Time Force" (2001). "Ninja Steel" puts the five Rangers (with a sixth one joining later) back in high school, but dumbs down a lot of the stories with an eye to pleasing the kiddie audience. It also adds two comic relief characters, a conceited jock and his obsequious sidekick, whose antics will make the kids laugh, but try the patience of older fans who may have fond memories of the original comic PR foils, Bulk and Skull.

An interesting angle has the Rangers' exploits serve as material for an intergalactic reality show called "Galaxy Warriors," in which miscreants from other planets can watch on TV as the monsters employed by alien warlord Galvanax descend to Earth to try to defeat the Power Rangers. When their efforts invariably fail, the program host presses a "gigantify" button that causes the vanquished monster to come back to life and grow into giant size, at which point the Rangers call in their Zords to finish the job.

A lot of episodes revolve around problems the five Rangers, Brody, Sarah, Preston, Calvin and Hayley, cause themselves. Brody (Red Ranger) uses his "datacom" device to cheat on tests. Sarah (Pink Ranger) creates clones of herself to do some serious, if misguided multitasking. Preston (Blue Ranger) gets hold of some ancient spells, but thinks he can learn them quickly without paying attention to the fine print. Calvin (Yellow Ranger) is in awe of a local driver with a cool car and offers to fix the engine at a time he needs to be available to help the other Rangers. Hayley (White Ranger) and Calvin get into an argument which leads to them running against each other for student government president. Even their robot ally, Redbot, oversteps his bounds when he writes a book taking credit for the Power Rangers' achievements. They all have to learn from the messes that result from their hubris or irresponsibility.

One of the best episodes has the five banding together to take on a local crisis, caused when Preston's father, a real estate tycoon, buys the land that's home to the town's sacred Ribbon Tree, on which the citizens traditionally hang ribbons with their wishes on them. While two of the Rangers rally the townsfolk and another two occupy the tree to keep the bulldozers away, Preston tries to change his father's heart. It's actually quite a moving episode and features excellent performances by the actors playing Preston and his embittered father.

There's an emotional backstory involving Brody and his long-lost brother, Aiden, who were separated as boys when their father, a ninja warrior, disappeared while fighting Galvanax and preventing him from attaining the prized ninja steel. Brody is held as a slave by Galavanax until he's a teenager and manages to engineer an escape with the help of another human slave, Mick, a wild-eyed, wild-haired mechanical genius from another galaxy. They wind up in Summer Cove, where they set up shop at the local high school and find the ninja steel stored in a clever hiding place. Brody never gives up the hope of reuniting with Aiden, which, if you know your Power Rangers, is bound to eventually happen. There's a significant obstacle along the way, but when the reunion finally happens, it packs quite a punch.

In a most unusual development for Power Rangers, two of the Rangers, Calvin and Hayley, are in a committed relationship before the series starts and remain so throughout. They display a lot of affection--holding hands, hugging, putting their arms around each other, etc. It also happens to be a black-white interracial relationship, Calvin being white and Hayley being black, which makes it something of a first in the Power Rangers universe. The Blue Ranger, Preston, is Asian, Sarah is white, and Brody and his brother are of indeterminate ethnic origin. Even though the characters don't have much depth and their relationships lack the intensity of those in Power Rangers Dino Charge, I thought the actors were, for the most part, pleasant and engaging, with special marks going to Chrysti Ane (Sarah), Peter Sudarso (Preston), Nico Greetham (Calvin), and Zoe Robins (Hayley). They were warm and fun to spend a half-hour with.

The series was based on its Japanese sentai counterpart, "Shuriken Sentai Ninninger" (2015), although its connection to that series is slight. Some fight scenes from the original are used, although many more fight scenes are restaged in New Zealand for the Ninja Steel scenes. The Zord battles offer the only consistent use of Japanese footage in the whole series and are, as usual, quite imaginative and exciting.

ADDENDUM: The new season of Power Rangers premiered on January 27, 2018, under the title, "Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel," so it's a continuation of the previous season with the same cast and some of the same villains, but with the ninja steel upgraded to "super."

Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960)

Naruse ventures into Ozu territory

[10/10 · 10 December 2017]

DAUGHTER, WIVES, MOTHER (MUSUME TSUMA HAHA, 1960) is one of six color films directed by Mikio Naruse and it tells the story of an extended family facing various domestic crises, not least of which is the possible loss of the family home. It's very much in Yasujiro Ozu territory, going so far as to invoke Ozu's masterpiece, TOKYO STORY (1953), as it focuses on a matriarch and her five children and their various spouses or significant others and the looming question of what to do with the mother and who should take responsibility for her if they have to give up the house. The connection to the earlier film is further underlined by the casting of two of the main actors from that film (Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu) in different roles in this film. Unlike the earlier film, however, the mother here has a number of options and makes a striking choice late in the film to serve her own needs. One character even makes an Ozu-like decision based on what she thinks will be best for the family, only to learn that the family has other ideas, making her self-sacrifice in vain. Another difference from Ozu is that Setsuko Hara, a frequent star of Ozu films, playing the oldest daughter here, a widow courted by two suitors, smiles a lot, something she doesn't do much for Ozu. In several scenes, she seems to be having a good time, including a couple of dates with suitor Tatsuya Nakadai, whom I've never seen smile so much either. They even kiss each other when they find themselves alone in her brother's apartment. I don't think I've ever seen a show of passion like that in Ozu.

Naruse's regular star Hideko Takamine (FLOATING CLOUDS) plays Hara's sister-in-law and I believe this is the only film in which she and Hara, two powerhouses of Japanese acting, appear together. (It's also the only film in which Hara and Nakadai appear together.) Also on hand are Akira Takarada (GOJIRA), Hiroshi Koizumi (MOTHRA), Reiko Dan (WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS), Daisuke Kato (THE SEVEN SAMURAI) and Masayuki Mori as the self-centered unrepentant weakling he seems to play in every other Naruse film I've seen him in. The two old mothers in the film, the family matriarch and her middle daughter's mother-in-law, played by Aiko Mimasu and Haruko Sugimura, respectively, are only 60, but are made up and directed to look and act much older. (Both actresses were about 50 when they made this film.) The two mothers even visit an old people's home and everyone else there is obviously 20-30 years older! Ozu regular Chishu Ryu, the father in TOKYO STORY, even turns up as an old man (he was 55 at the time). Overall, this is an excellent Japanese family drama and quite a change of pace for Naruse from the earlier films of his that I've seen.