Xenobites (2008) User Reviews

Another hit from Fredianelli

[Pycal · 7/10 · 21 September 2008]

After taking a shot at the romantic comedy sub-genre, prolific indie filmmaker Michael Fredianelli returns to familiar territory. His newest film is 'Xenobites'; a beautifully shot Sci-Fi actioneer with plenty of thrills. Above all, the film serves as an excellent semi-parody of noirish 1980s post apocalyptic action films. Some of the best parts of the movie relate to its excellent use of dark comic book like humor, "Jackass" stunts, and documentary style filming.

Though the film has drawn comparisons to 'Sin City' for its look and atmosphere, Robert Rodriguez (with all his green screens and computer wizardry) has nothing on Fredianelli; a director who has enough balls to squib stunt men, set things on fire, and jump off rooftops (all on a shoestring budget).

Of particular interest is the film's cartoonish Yakuza themed subplot. While there clearly isn't an infinite supply of Japanese actors in San Jose, Henry Lee's performance as the sinister Ken Yoshihara is one of the film's highlights. Though he may not speak 100% Yakuza Japanese, he performs his lines with great finesse.

Fredianelli is great as the treacherous crook turned Philip Marlowe; an injury prone private eye with a speech impediment. Besides having a really cool Dutch last name, the detective wastes bad guys left and right and participates in a shootout that is as much 'Hard-Boiled' as it is 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'.

Aaron Stielstra provides some fine original music and Michael Nosé excels as the film's cinematographer. The rest of the cast is also fun to watch; Kevin Giffin is great as the sadistic Italian mobster and Jana Ireton provides some good comic relief (in addition to being really really hot).

All in all, a solid Wild Dogs production and one of Fredianelli's best films to date.

another Fredianelli-going-around-killing-people movie

[Aylmer · 7/10 · 13 September 2008]

Since SIN CITY came out a couple years ago a lot of films have jumped on the action-noir bandwagon. This one distinguishes itself with about twice as much violence as CITY while on a practically non-existent budget.

Earnest (if uneven) performances and rapid-fire editing try their damnedest but can't overcome a thoroughly uncompelling story focusing on another 1-dimensional antihero. While the backstory is potentially intriguing (the government unleashes undead demons to aid in law enforcement), it all boils down to an cliché-ridden overall narrative (rogue investigator versus Yakuza henchmen while out to find the MacGuffin VHS tape).

That said, the action scenes are very well-done and actually improve substantially as the film goes along. Just when you're about to doze off during the sluggish mid-section, a neat footchase erupts traversing rooftops, public store frontage, parking garages, hedgerows, etc. The film also pulls a few surprises later on - killing off a lot of characters when you don't expect it at all. Even one undeserving character dies particularly brutally via plastic bag suffocation... with a pt. blank shot in the face to add insult to injury.

Highlights include a Yakuza mass-murder scene rivaling the 1989 PUNISHER movie, the aforementioned footchase, a hilarious dream sequence, and some sporadically good gore.

Impressive for the budget, but the film would have benefited immeasurably from some tightening up, some set design, and some more dynamic lighting.

Fredianelli's most personal statement

[twolanebl · 9/10 · 21 September 2008]

After dabbling with genre with the entertaining but detached A Bird in the Bush, Michael Fredianelli comes back swinging with his toughest and most personal crimer yet, a remake of his early short Xenobites. Originally a science fiction noir mash up along the lines of Blade Runner with a hint of Sin City, this feature length iteration of that universe largely diverts from the science fiction story line concerning government-made psychic cops who turn psychopathic and turn the streets of San Jose into chaos. Instead, it focuses on Icarus Van Calder's (Fredianelli) struggle to find a tape that seemingly every shady figure in town wants. Naturally, yakuza, Michael Nosé, and other violent types get involved, and things quickly become very complicated.

With the mash-up of a large cast and a lot of interaction shooting sequences, the film would seem to suffer from Bird's increasing loss of focus upon its central characters. Luckily, this film centers itself around character much more so than action sequences or even its cute colored objects within a black and white framework motif. Fredianelli himself has stated some dissatisfaction about his character: "I'm just going through the motions (and not very well at that) on the type of character I've done to death and sick of doing," but I think that detachment, that sense of the same-old same-old works much to the director's favor in this piece. Reminiscent of Alain Delon's bored performance in Un Flic, the frustration and laconic performance gives ways at times to staggering emotiveness, both in Fredianelli's writing and his willingness to abandon the familiar modes that he's already perfected.

Around the halfway point of the film, the crimer plot has unravelled for the most part, and the finish seems like it shouldn't be terribly far off. When he cuts to a still of a studious- looking man with a Briar in his mouth and the voice-over starts dictating on about a mission to assassinate the creator of the Xenobites, it seems as though Fredianelli's thus far razor sharp narrative, floundering for something to push it into feature-length time, has fallen into episodic storytelling. Although the transition does chop itself into the narrative, the story line that it develops between Van Calder and the creator's daughter turns the film from an entertaining crimer into a devastatingly personal statement about destructiveness in the face of human apathy.

To say that Fredianelli's general subtextual feature is nihilism seems like an understatement, but the work he's done films as disparate as The Mark, Violent by Nature, and the last five minutes of A Bird in the Bush all finally comes together as a cohesive statement in this film. Although I do think the film is misogynistic in all its excessive violence and emotional battering done to its female characters, it's clear in this picture that Fredianelli is not only aware of this tendency in the film but also manages to work on it, not to excuse it by any means but to shed some light on it.

After all the abuse, business-related and otherwise, and a nihilistic placement of his position in the world summed up by Shai Wilson's character: "censored by the IMDb," the light romantic possibilities with the target's daughter seems like an oasis. Fredianelli borrows Chaplin's dinner roll dream from The Gold Rush with a heartbreaking dream sequence that, natural as it could be, seems like it was lifted from another film in the context of the piece as a whole.

This turn seems to divert the crimer plot in the same way the romantic comedy moments did in Bird, but the turn here sheds more light on the central character than any facade of romance could. Do these things excuse such brutality? Of course not, but I think it's safe to say that Fredianelli's aware of this too in such scenes as the brutal dispatching of Cassidy via plastic bag. The explication of these aspects, figured into the two women characters, serves to highlight the overall destructive nature of Van Calder, something that seems like it could be changed if it weren't for the caprices of oblivious parties and the folly of fate.

for the rest of this, see http://todd1726.blogspot.com/2008/09/fredianellis-character- type-as.html

"After all, what love can I give the world if none is ever given to me?"

[KingM21 · 9/10 · 17 December 2008]

A full-length extension of one of the director's early short films, Xenobites is a stylish horror/action noir about a private dick (Icarus Van Calder, another one of Fredianelli's patented nihilist antiheros) who clashes with Asian mobsters and battles demonic law enforcers on the side. The feature is shot in atmospheric black & white with occasional moments of color, such as during the flashbacks and, most strikingly, the many welcome discharges of blood. In fact, I dare say this is some of the best blood and squib work of Fredianelli's prolific career so far. An overly dark scene here or there aside, the photography is quite good as well, professional even. And completing the technical package is Aaron Stielstra's superb synth music, giving the film a moody, Carpenteresque tone rarely found in contemporary cinema. Xenobites' plot is pretty original, though the somber story feels just a bit dry at times and takes a somewhat jarring, albeit stimulating, twist about halfway through, completely changing Van Calder's MO to a much more grand design. Dark themes of self and worldly disillusion fit themselves neatly into the proceedings, conveyed by the cast of dependable regulars and the wonderful addition of Henry Lee as the apathetic Yakuza boss badass. Finally, a Wild Dogs picture wouldn't be a Wild Dogs picture without its gritty violence and potent action, and this one delivers the goods. Beatings and bullets abound, swords cross, and real martial arts enter into one particularly brutal, glass-shattering fight scene. The athletic, stunt-filled foot chase is the best Fredianelli has ever put on celluloid and the elevator sequence, where a Xeno out for revenge is after Van Calder, rivals James Cameron's one in T2. Mighty impressive stuff for a low-budget movie.

I don't think Xenobites breaks much new ground for Fredianelli and company but, in numerous ways, it does pretty much perfect it. And still, it was nice to see a return to his roots, so to speak, with the material, giving it the much-deserved feature treatment. One can only hope he does the same with his infamous Higgy and Puffs saga.

All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony and that a xenobite may be involved.

[Jenesis · 8/10 · 11 December 2008]

The latest Wild Dogs creation is an impressive upgrade of an earlier short piece. So impressive in fact that my standard rage against the remake machine never even came to mind as I watched this concoction of sci-fi, noir, detective potboiler and actioner. Plot follows private investigator Icarus Van Calder, who finds himself in an ever complicating web of interested parties as he tries to find a videotape containing some devastating material. And I'm not talking about Gerardo music clips. Van Calder is Fredianelli's most complex character yet, a self loathing, brutal loner with suicidal tendencies. He doesn't hesitate to violently dispatch a contact (the plastic bag scene is as heinous and disturbing as they come), but conversely his innate naiveté comes to the fore in a couple of scenes with a sexually uninterested female companion played by Jana Ireton, looking as lovely as ever. There's fine casting splashed all over the place here. Newcomer Henry Lee is a fine addition to the ever expanding company of WD players, with a cracked-out hipster Sonny Chiba look and a quietly sneering line delivery. He puts in some capable falls and swings in an extended fight sequence with a gutsy Fredianelli, who puts the resilience of his humerus to the test in one stunt versus a picture frame. Hope to see more of this guy, hopefully in some sort of interracial MMA smackdown with Joe Tamayo. I expect a story credit for that idea. My only real quibble with the film is that the titular xenobites are marginalised to a fairly minor plot point after all the early build up. I would have liked to have seen more of their drooling nappy-headed antics and in fact some of their appearances, leaping from the shadows like rabid chimps with ADHD, verge on scary. Definite improvement on the bucktoothed Ringo Starr look-alikes in the original. Also I found the fact that the xenobites are created via some ridiculous voodoo incantation (which for all we know is random graffiti from a Port-Au-Prince public toilet wall cribbed during a Depth Charge location scout) a bit silly. Henry spitting some gibberish off a piece of paper to reanimate a corpse clashes with the rest of the film otherwise taking such great pains at straight-faced realism. A boring old genetic manipulation idea would perhaps have done the job, though maybe the Wild Dogs corporate budget would not extend to building a tinfoil and cardboard genetic experiment laboratory in the Fredianelli family garage to illustrate the creation of these psycho goofcops. Come to think of it that idea has already been done in one of those Universal Soldier sequels starring Goldberg and Michael Jai White. Much benefit is gained from superb monochrome photography, big credit has to go to my usual blurbal punching bag Michael Nosé for some stunning work with lighting and contrast. Near pro quality. I could have lived without the random splashes of colour throughout though, they felt a bit too slavishly Sin City for my taste. The most technically accomplished Wild Dogs production to date, with easily the best performances across the board. A superb final shooting massacre in an office building that would have John Woo reaching for his heart pills.

"Xenobites" Bites Back

[HughBennie-777 · 19 September 2008]

"Xenobites" Some spoilers The much awaited remake of the Fredianelli epic packs more punch, plot and an extravaganza of extraterrestrial (and astronomical) additions to the original flick. The movie's fantastic black and white photography employs an isolated color scheme that is, at its most predictable, sadly reminiscent of "Sin City", but, more importantly, adds a welcome visual depth to the compositions. Unfortunately, a "Sin City" voice-over accompanies the action. It's one thing to listen to noir-esquire contrivances uttered by our movie's somber hero. It's another when words like "betwixt" are part of his Mickey Spillane vocabulary--though I'm happy to say Fredianelli's improved on his enunciation skills. I also compliment the man on his super-cool brown leather coat and black turtle-neck combo. Undeniably, the advances this movie makes over the original film are pretty damn tremendous: the chiaruscuro exteriors, including numerous wet streets and starkly lit alleyways and buildings, are amazing. The sound design on the action scenes is almost perfect, with a few explosions of gunfire still capable of deafening the most barbaric of metal guitarists. Curiously, the smiling xenobite creatures, themselves, are prone to making blood-curdling wails and howls as if they're not so much expressing hatred but discharging enormous doo-doos. A samurai sword fight in a hotel room is an exciting ethnic, violent diversion, as is the performance by a wonderful yakuza chieftain (Henry Lee) who resembles an Asian Paul Benjamin, plus contributes some karate to the proceedings. This movie also features an outstanding foot chase; one of the best I've ever seen. Right up there with "French Connection II" and "To Live And Die In L.A." Non-professionals, you say? Not when witnessing the two participants leaping bushes and walls and rooftops. The absolute reckless physical abandonment and risk-taking were never better captured on a zero budget movie. The skills shown here, plus the remarkable death pose on actor Kevin Giffin are fantastic. Giffin also excels at playing the head h-nky gangster, capable of a grandmotherly warmth which barely disguises his utter contempt for humans. Whether beating somebody senseless with a bat or performing in a "52 Pickup" snuff film, the man's dangerous, hillbilly visage is an asset to the production. Other notable villains include the sinister father (James Soderberg) of artist-girl-in-peril Jane Ireton, who mutters such inappropriate comments as: "There was a hole in his head big enough to f---" before transitioning into: "So, have you talked to your mother recently?". This man's comeuppance is one of the most remarkably startling (and hilarious) moments in the entire canon of Fredianelli's work. But enough with the gushing. Let's get to the questions and a concluding rant.

Why are the clumsy xenobite creatures so incompetent at doing their assassin-like work? If they're supposed to be as lethal as cops, why do they lack even the most basic tactical, surveillance skills and allow themselves be picked off like targets? Why does Van Calder recover so quickly from numerous head injuries, some of them delivered with steel bats? Why does the black girl transform from noir-esquire sophisticate to tough-talking ghetto chick? How and why does Van Calder's tongue injury render him a hair lip retard in the beginning, then heal overnight? Why does Van Calder go to all the trouble to strangle a girl when he's only going to shoot her after?

Obviously, a lot of work was done and measures taken to insure this movie kicked the bare ass of its predecessor, and on that level it succeeds in spades. Unfortunately, the weak acting often dilutes the slick production design and cool story. I had a difficult time forgiving some of the blatant posturing that disguised itself as acting here, this in the case of the supporting players and not Fredianelli, or Ireton, or Giffin, or Anthony Spears, or even the xenobites, for that matter. Fredianelli, himself, settles better into a character role here, with more complexity evident in his innumerable close-ups. I even identified "pity" in there, of all things(!). And for one final admonishing word, if I die and never have to see another black-suit-attired man brandishing two automatic pistols and unloading clips into single bad guys again, I will die a happy f---ing man. When are we going to get out of the 1990s? Prolonged gun battles are unforgivable in this day and age, and John Woo and his entire Hong Kong cinema of stylized, unrealistic violence need to crawl back under the rock they grew under. The eternal dying extras, the slick gun moves, the preening action heroics are so old as to be prehistoric. For a solid thriller, this movie had at least two potential endings prior to the climactic bloodbath I would have preferred seeing, instead.

Quick compliments: One exceptional smash zoom on a Japanese yakuza-turned-xenobite displays perfect George Romero timing. The "painting lesson" scene is priceless. Great character name in Teagen Trogwaters. Lots of decent stingers and synth drones on the soundtrack, as well. Somebody please get this director a real crew and a supporting cast who can oblige the man's talent.