robotman-2 Reviews

Born Invincible (1978)

White-Haired Supervillain

[1 June 2001]

Supervillains in Kung Fu movies are invaribly the coolest parts of the genre, because they are nearly always impervious and superior, both in intelligence and fighting ability, to anyone else. Their power is generated through sheer force and will, and only the hero(es) preternatural lust for revenge usually defeats these awesome Kung Fu menaces.

In BORN INVINCIBLE, you get probably the most bizarre, yet realistic, supervillain in the whole of the genre. Carter Wong's Tai Chi training (a style developed by a woman), starting from a small child, results in iron skin, snow-white hair, and a high, feminine voice. This Tai Chi master becomes an unstoppable thug-chieftain who can fight a deadly duel and, simultaneously, carve a Chinese yin-yang symbol in the earth with his feet. This powerful supervillain operates from a source of disipline that is downright scary; Wong is entirely invincible but for his one weak point. When you see how relentless Wong's killer-master is, you can't help but relate to the terror in the heroes' faces when they have to take him on. Fact is, if not for the honor of their school, which is paramount to the students trying to take revenge for Wong's murder of their teacher, nobody would mess with the Tai Chi master, since it is considered by the most learned monks to be certain death.

What separates Joe Kuo film villains, characters like Wong's and the great Ghost-Faced Killer from MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING, is that Kuo puts one scene in there to show us the supervillain is also human. Wong's character is stopped from a killing rampage at one point by a white-haired nun, and there's a moment when Wong seems to reflect on what he IS, a killer, as opposed to what he trained to become, an otherworldly kind of priest attuned to nature and the inner forces like the nun. The fact that Wong won't, or can't, stem his bloodlust and sadism is his undoing. There's a lot going on in BORN INVINCIBLE aside from the superior fighting skill of the actors. One of the best Kung Fu films based merely on this unusual depth of character, and a knock-out all the way.

Raw Deal (1948)

Shadows Don't Wash Off

[10/10 · 31 May 2001]

Folks can go on and on about a visual style. The fact is, RAW DEAL exemplifies more than just an atmosphere. There's a catalyst for horrific violence driven by the desperation of the characters, their psychosis and their inability to escape from the choking shadows not only around them, but inside their heads. This movie, a cheap b-production with only one actor with stand-out talent, Claire Trevor, and a young powerful Raymond Burr, manages to seem authentic all the way through because it doesn't hold back on the violence or the threat of violence. There's a desperate prison escape, by hero O'Keefe, who's trying to get to Burr the crime boss, for whom he took a fall. Burr wants O'Keefe dead so he doesn't have to worry about O'Keefe ratting on him. O'Keefe uses two women he knows, his floozy Trevor and the good-girl counselor he really loves (she's cast in light and draws him like a moth) as cover. The movie then follows O'Keefe as he does a mini-FUGITIVE, like the television show, making love to his women and encountering a raging lunatic in the woods who doesn't have anything to do with him, but might get O'Keefe caught anyway by swarming police on the hunt for the maniac.

In this rough noir, you get a suicide by cop, a guy fighting not to get his face impaled on a set of wall antlers, a flaming friccasee thrown in a drunk woman's face, a nasty deception and the good girl getting tortured, and a bloody final encounter between psycho Burr and O'Keefe, with plenty of face-ripping and falling from burning buildings. That's not standard stuff, and if you can get into babe Trevor with light shimmering on her lips as she tries to figure out how to save her thug O'Keefe from the police, Burr, and the younger angel ready to steal him away, then you will enjoy hell out of this film.

Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1980)

Superstar Kung-Fu

[17 April 2001]

Here in 10 TIGERS you will find almost all of the major Chang Cheh stars, Venoms, Fu Sheng, and the incredible Ti Lung, whom I believe is one of the best actors to ever come out of the East. But all the Shaw Bros great are on display in 10, and director Cheh is able to immediately establish a bizarre juxtaposition within the usual hero-villain conflict. The usual dynamic of the five Venoms is flip-flopped; here, you get to see Philip Kwok and Lo Meng, popular good guys, act like vicious thugs (accidentally), and my personal favorite Lu Feng, always a henchman usually, as a strong hero (all too brief).

The plot is broodingly dark, as a group of young Kung Fu students is stalked and murdered by two Ching assassins. The five students, trying to figure out why, relate the story of their fathers' adventure to save a famous Chinese revoluntionary, years before. Known by legend as "10 Tigers," the students' fathers risked their lives and homes to save the political figure. The two assassins have come to gain revenge for the murder of Wei Pei's government hunter, who attempted to capture the revolutionary.

The final confrontation between the surviving "sons" of this political intrigue is a supremely violent, bloody affair culminating in a gruesome final image. A well-made film, with much humor from Kwok, Sheng and Meng. Though not Shaws' best, well worth seeing.

Kung Fu (1972–1975)

Bruce Lee's Ultraviolence

[7 April 2001]

"Kung Fu" was a fantastic series chronicling the movements of a Shaolin

monk through America's Old West, pursued by his past as the murderer of a royal personage in China and enduring the racism and squalor

forced on immigrants.

What made the series work was Carradine's superior acting work,

his naturalistic humbleness balanced against fluid emotionless kung-fu violence. Carradine understood that the character of Caine would only work

if Caine remained always hesitant, always agonized, in being forced to violent action. He is, after all, a Buddist priest.

Bruce Lee, despite his charisma, would have changed Caine's dynamic and rendered him hollow. Even being limited as an actor, Lee had philosophical differences with Caine that would have appeared ludicrous if melded together: Lee's kung-fu technique forbade the very thought of mercy to an enemy, which is the central strength of any master of the art. As pointed out by Lau Kar Leung, one of the best fight choreographers in Hong Kong over the last twenty years, Lee's style consisted of irresistible brute force and tenacity, but Lee's overall technique, his moves in relation to other well-trained kung-fu fighters, was poor. Meaning, Lee was a machine of destruction, but not the restrained balletic fighter whose style would reflect his inner turmoil, as Carradine was.

It is a shameful fact that Bruce Lee was not given the opportunity to appeal to the mass American audience earlier in his short career, to become the

star he would emerge as back overseas, and all because of blatant racism. Still, television is an arena of bad taste, and the fact that the series

turned out as good as it did is a testament to Carradine and the writers

who melded the character into an icon.

The Eighteen Jade Arhats (1978)

Kung-Fu Murder Mystery

[3 April 2001]

EIGHTEEN JADE may not be as classy as a Shaw Bros epic, but there's an interesting blending of the murder-mystery that makes the movie worth catching. A white-maned powerhouse Lord goes off to duel with a swordsman rival and ends up being murdered. The Lord's house then sets about hiring assassins to kill the rival, whom they believe is the back-stabbing killer. Along the way, two young warriors (probably the most uninteresting, and in the girl's case, annoying of the characters) are hired but are unsure that the swordsman rival is the murderer. The two then begin to question likely suspects, other rivals of the Lord, who may have been involved.

The jade arhats are a side-plot involving the girl warrior and her murdered family. She is on a mission of revenge, but the contrivance does lead the warriors to the true killer.

Because of the pompous, snide "heroes," there is no suspense when they are endangered. However, this aside, the various revelations they uncover, and the final climatic battle with the killer, are expertly-handled. The mystery experiment is not wasted.

Shaolin vs. Lama (1983)

Raging Tigers

[30 March 2001]

SHAOLIN VS LAMA is a fabulous kung-fu film, complete with an excellent plot involving a stolen Shaolin manuscript detailing all the 72 techniques. The thief, a Tibetan Lama masquerading as a Shaolin student, becomes a master fighter and criminal, gaining power through murder and manipuilation of the fighting clans. A young street fighter, seeking higher knowledge of

kung-fu by challenging any teaching master he meets, in order to find a master he cannot defeat, is drawn to the Shaolin temple and put at odds with the murderous Tibetan monks.

In rapid, but logical succession, a series of fights occur, escalating to operatic heights. The villain is a vicious, unstoppable monster; the young hero is loyal and determined. There are no extraneous kung-fu fight scenes, everything plot-wise is tight and staccato, with each confrontation revealing volumes of character. As in the best of the genre, the fighters, who have conditioned their bodies to absorb and deliver incredible amounts of punishment, eventually turn out to be human in two distinct ways: upon finding redemption, and just before death. An excellent film.

Shaolin Prince (1982)

Trial by 18 Monks

[10/10 · 27 February 2001]

A cool film, no doubt, designed by the Shaw Bros. Superhumans abound, from the Ninth Prince and his iron glove whose two entended fingers can snap swords like bamboo, to an aquatic assassin who fights with two herringbone-cleavers, to the intertwined mass of the 18 Shaolin monks whose combined bodies create an unstoppable single fighter that protects the secrets of their Temple. You even have a Chinese exorcism, complete with possessed young girl slashing off heads with long needle-like claws, and this only a brief sub-plot.

The final confrontation alone, between the film's two young fighting heroes and the evil Ninth Prince, astride an ornate royal transom that turns into a sword-shooting, body-crushing battering ram, makes the movie well worth seeing. A groove.

The Limey (1999)

The Alternative-World Richard Stark

[10/10 · 18 October 2000]

Richard Stark is a brilliant writer of a series of novels about a professional thief named Parker, a vicious thug who operates with a strict machine-like intelligence juxtaposed against a willingness to kill anyone in his way.

In this film, an alternative-world Parker is deconstructed and reassembled as Wilson, the just-released from prison professional thief whose daughter has died under mysterious circumstances while involved in some pretty sleazy situations with Peter Fonda's high-class criminal dealings. Wilson begins a systematic brutalization of anyone and everyone in his way, both physically and emotionally. His quest, for the reasons behind his daughter's death, is a drive for meaning, not understanding. Wilson does not need to, nor have any desire to, "understand" the new criminal element, the white corporate faces that front so-called "businesses". Wilson,

an embittered, coldly-menacing professional thug, is without pretention, seeking only motivation for his particular brand of destruction. Even if Wilson could show concern and love for his daughter, she is dead; Wilson shows love the only way he can, by killing and maiming until he has the answers he seeks.

THE LIMEY is brilliant, with much credit given to Soderbergh for the inventive editing that allows the viewer to slip under the tough emotionless mask of Wilson, so that we see the world through Wilson's fragmented, seething mind-set. But Terence Stamp is the reason to become immersed in the story. His elegance lends the film a tormented vision of a once-young, once-beautiful

man playfully singing for girls, lost under the deafening

roar of guns and the lifeless vacuum of prison. A must-see Stamp performance.

Gothic (1986)

Leeches and Intellectuals

[10/10 · 18 October 2000]

GOTHIC is a seductive and fascinating study of the four principle players in the turn-of-the-century origin of at least one, if not two, of the principle monster icons of popular culture: the

vampire and the Frankenstein Monster. But despite the incredible (and true) historical significance of the writing challenge, to produce a ghost story apiece worthy of these literary personages, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Polidori, the film is brilliant in its fictional depiction of people whose minds are brilliant enough, creatively, that their ideas become tangible forces, released, and uncontrollable.

The chaotic structure of GOTHIC is excellent, while the interplay between the actors is fabulous. GOTHIC's intellectual hysteria creates an atmosphere where ghosts and demons gain power and autonomous life from their creators, showing the formulation in Mary Shelley's mind of the Frankenstein story, and the tragic consequence of both the story and the real lives of Percy Shelley, Byron and Polidori. Well worth experiencing.

Sands of the Kalahari (1965)

Lord of the Apes

[10/10 · 18 October 2000]

SANDS OF THE KALIHARI, like Cornel Wilde's great NAKED PREY released a year later, provides a stunning view of civilized men being forced into blood-thirsty savagery to survive. Unlike PREY, whose protagonist's viciousness is directed at African hunter-tribesmen who pursue him for sport, the main character of SANDS, played by Stuart Whitmore, devolves into evil betrayal against his fellow survivors after a plane crash strands them in a desert hundreds of miles from help, with a mountainous oasis populated by wild baboons competing for food.

Whitmore, as a prototypical American male, muscular and handsome, the true "survivor" of the small group, decides to elimanate all competition for food, including the members of his party. Whitmore's brute problem-solving turns him into a murderer, and eventually into a raving beast that cannot return to civilization unless, of course, he kills the other survivors who are witnesses to his transgressions. The final scenes, one of the great scenes in cinema in fact, must be experienced: Whitmore's ultra-violent fight with the baboons, in which Whitmore experiences what he has truly become, is incredible. See it.

Frankenstein (1931)

A Film, Not a Book

[10/10 · 3 October 2000]

After a century of film-making, there is still such a vast and all-consuming ignorance of what films in general, and FRANKENSTEIN in particular, are supposed to do. Source material, from

Mary Shelley's novel of the same title, sub-heading "Modern Prometheus", is an overheated gothic tale exploring a topic that was very prominent at the turn of the century: the morality of Science. Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, creates artificial life in his laboratory, and witnesses that life gather its own intelligence. Eventually, the life-form demands more, haunting Frankenstein to his end.

The book is literature, a time-piece. The film FRANKENSTEIN is also a time-piece, but the book has no bearing on the film. This is a film about a creature, the Monster played by Boris Karloff, and the great Jack Pierce make-up which is an icon of American culture. The Monster is inarticulate, confused, and dangerous. The story concerns the Monster's attempt to understand anything around it: the Monster has been given electric life by von Frankenstein, but it has no understanding, and no time to understand before its immense strength commits the murders that will condemn it.

The book is a reaction to intellectual exploration of life and death, and the consequences of assuming the role of "God". The film is about the loneliness and despair of a freakish creation trying to understand the simpliest, but most powerful, human emotions, and being unable to do so. The movie is not the book, thankfully, but is a jarring introduction to cinematic story-telling that is still powerful and evocative, while the book remains an excellent work hampered by the literary conventions of its time.

The Way of the Gun (2000)

McQuarrie shrugs off USUAL SUSPECTS

[10/10 · 10 September 2000]

Christopher McQuarrie has been living with his Oscar-winning screenplay for USUAL SUSPECTS for years, trying to get a

chance to direct his own film. Hollywood sees brand names in every human under contract. McQuarrie being no exception, he had to make another crime film instead of moving on to other kinds of stories, as he'd prefer.

WAY OF THE GUN is McQuarrie's writer-director debut, and it is brilliant. He is a natural set-shot kind of guy, with great instincts, as seen in every scene of this very taut, very layered piece. The characters in the film, all of them, are twisted from previous brutality, or violence of one form or another. The two hoods Parker and Longbaugh (Phillppe and the unbelievable del Toro) commit themselves to the kidnapping of a nine-months pregnant surrogate mother for a very wealthy magnate played by the great Scott Wilson. The surrogate is protected by the machine-like bodyguards Diggs and Katt, who are professional thugs in impeccable business suits, alternate mirror images of Parker and Longbaugh. Simultaneously, another couple of criminals, another mirror image of these other men, but much older and scarred from a lifetime of violence, the brilliant James Caan and Jeffrey Lewis, begin the hunt to bring the kidnappers down and retrieve the mother. The very pregnant surrogate (a fine Juliette Lewis, Jeffrey's real-life daughter) and the child she carries is the center of the escalating conflict, in which all these men, these differing versions of violent lives, detonates at once in the showdown in a sleazy Mexican town.

This is one of the best crime films ever made, and it is because of the synergy between McQuarrie and his stunning cast. This is a movie that is broken up into three acts, three gut-wrenching shoot-outs. Along the way, every faction tells their story, and why they are as they are, and how little a damn they give if you understand them or not. Caan should be nominated for best Supporting. And McQuarrie deserves a chance now to do whatever the hell it is he wants to do, in the Hollywood system, out from under his Oscar shadow.

The Iron Giant (1999)

About a Machine Man

[10/10 · 7 September 2000]

Without doubt one of the best films of the past ten years, animated or not, IRON GIANT is a fabulous love letter to 1950s science fiction b-movies and b-fiction. The central figure, the alien robot construct, is as grand and cool a physical design for a robot as ever put on film; but then this is perfectly balanced with the character of the robot, a being who is sentient and loyal, as he understands it.

The robot, befriended by a young boy who is himself a SF b-movie junkie during the reactionary '50s time period, engages the boy and the boy's beatnik confidant with his trust, allowing the film to briskly detail the Giant's advances, as he comes to understand his own nature, the possibility of becoming a deadly weapon and a "monster" from the boy's comic books, and his understanding of heroism and love for his friends. In a world which is dangerous for the robot, and he in turn a danger to it because he is built to destroy, rather than love, the Giant's story of coming to the realization of what and who he truly is has a poignancy that is simply amazing. It is a story of redemption as great as the classic monster icons that have inspired this movie, such as the deformed Quasimodo of Notre Dame's saving of the beautiful, wrongly-accused Esmeralda who will be executed unless he protects her, even if he must die for her, loving the unattainable beauty he loves but can never have, or Frankenstein's Monster destroying himself and his newly-created Bride of Frankenstein because they are, in the Monster's opinion, a vile affront to nature.

The Giant too realizes he must do what he has to, in order not to be a monster. It is one of the grand moments in cinema when the robot faces his fate, and becomes more than human in the process. An amazing film worth seeing many, many times.

X-Men (2000)

One Review Inawed

[10/10 · 7 September 2000]

X-MEN does so many things right for all the right reasons. Bryan Singer and his screenwriters took a comic book property, owned and operated by Marvel Enterprises ( a company that has driven all of its best titles to creative extinction, particularly their X-titles ) and produced a textured, iconic movie.

The comic book characters of Wolverine and Rogue, Magneto and Professor Xavier, the film's main players, are magnificently realized by the actors involved. Whereas the comics' versions of these characters are thin, mechanical props for a corporation to feed off of, the film's actors create histories, motivations, and passions by being earnest, and real, in their portrayals. Hugh Jackman in particular, as Wolverine, is able to take his tough-guy sneer or cocky walk and excellently, almost within the same scene, display kindness and intelligence and a humanity. This kind of acting job is rarely seen in action cinema, and because it IS action cinema, Jackman's accomplishment is nothing short of astounding.

Every scene of X-MEN is fabulously designed by director Singer. Only what is needed is shown onscreen, with excess verbiage and plot boiled down to essentials, but what is there is elegant and powerful. Even with the unfortunate influence of Hollywood's summertime moronics ( the post-elevator "revenge" of Storm, a push to get something cool out of Halle Barry, ends up hollow and anti-climactic compared to the life and death struggles around hers; and the hit-and-miss musical score of Michael Kamen stick out ) X-MEN's detailed acting and superb direction obliterate Hollywood's kiss of death. X-MEN is a great movie, with weight and substance stemming from creator talent and passion for the story. An achievement by everyone involved.

Godzilla 2000 (1999)

a monster movie ne plus ultra review

[10/10 · 28 August 2000]

This is the latest in the Toho Films series, and it should be noted that this movie is a GODZILLA movie, a genre unto itself. Not only is it an intelligent film, with likeable characters ( the Godzilla Prediction Unit is great, in the enthusiasm of scientists trying to understand Godzilla as a force of nature; besides that, who wouldn't want to be part of the GDU and have that cool Godzilla logo on the side of their transport vehicle? ) and a truly kinetic, enthusiastic script by Hiroshi Kashiwabara and Wataru Mimura--the most telling line of dialogue in the movie, which could be used to describe the love and respect the writers have, occurs when a television reporter comments that the entire proceeding is "like something out of a 1950s science fiction film."

And that is the point of this movie, to remind every one of us who grew up on monster movies that in the midst of all the ALIEN-stylized cinematic drool, that the giant UFO perched menacingly over Tokyo, shimmering with mysterious electronic pulsations while Godzilla ( with an underwater swimming scene for Godzilla that is priceless) stomps in for a classic samauri-like duel with the alien craft and its occupant, with all the Man In Suit and b-movie special effects you can stand, is the reason why many of us "creature feature" lovers continue going to the movies TODAY, because we're looking for something like GODZILLA 2000. A movie crafted with exquisite passion and respect, both for its subject and for its audience.

Go see this movie in a theatre, or be sorry you didn't. Thrill to the magnificent musical score (the best I've heard in a film this year), and the superior direction that provides Godzilla with power and heroism (yes, heroism; Godzilla's reasons for alternately destroying Tokyo, but fighting against alien forces to save it, demonstrates what all us monster freaks know: Godzilla is intelligent, and has his reasons). I dare you to go and see Godzilla blast away with his atomic breath and not be ready to come up out of your seat with joy. This movie is undiluted greatness, from beginning to end.