'King of Devil's Island' Movie Review

A few minutes into Norwegian director Marius Holst’s “King of Devil’s Island” you can guess the direction the story will go. That isn’t to say the film is bad or boring, it is in fact quite the opposite, but the plot is certainly one you’ve seen numerous times before. Part prison tale, part story of rebellion against a corrupt system, “King of Devil’s Island” follows the time-honored, almost western arc of a new individual coming into an existing situation and indelibly altering the landscape. What keeps the film from becoming stale are the performances, especially by the young cast, and the bonds and emotions they bring to the piece.

Blu-ray Review: 'The Coast Guard'

Director Kim Ki-duk’s (“3-Iron”) 2002 military drama, “The Coast Guard”, now out on Region 1 Blu-ray courtesy of Palisades Tartan, begins with a great deal of promise. The film starts out as a powerful, emotionally intense portrait of the casualties of war, even in a time of relative peace. As “The Coast Guard” progresses, however, the film spirals out of control, fractures into multiple stories that each distract from the other, and ultimately gets away from what made it engaging and watchable.

DVD Review: 'Clash' (AKA 'Bay Rong')

We’ve been writing about Vietnamese actioner “Clash” (AKA “Bay Rong”) on this site for some time. So long, in fact, that you might notice that the box for the region one DVD that just came out bears a quote from us on the bottom left-hand corner. While “Clash” isn’t blazing any new trails or breaking any new ground, it is pretty much right up our alley. And by that I mean it is a badass crime film full of all out ass-kicking and large-scale gun battles. If that doesn’t sound like a damn fine way to spend a couple of hours, you and I certainly have different tastes, my friend.

'Red Eagle' Movie Review

If movies like “RoboCop” are to be believed, the near future is going to be a festering cesspool of violence and corruption. It must be true, because no matter what era “near future” we’re talking about, the prediction is roughly the same. So, you should probably be on the look out in the next few years and be prepared. Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng’s (“Tears of the Black Tiger”) new superhero film, “Red Eagle”, a remake/homage to a 1960s action series, holds to this bleak vision. When the world is going to hell, and in desperate need of a savior, up steps Red Eagle.

'12 Paces Without A Head' Movie Review

“12 Paces Without A Head” tells the purportedly true tale of German pirates Klaus Stortebeker (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Godeke Michels (Matthias Schweighofer). The film imagines the story of these folk heroes as a buddy-action-comedy, one that includes modern touches, like contemporary diction, and twentieth-century pop and punk music. The first scene is a beheading set to a Clash song, so right away you know where you stand. That sounds like it could be annoying, but it actually fits rollicking nature of the movie. It may be a modern revision of a popular historical myth, but the laughs and swashbuckling action of “12 Paces” is enough to make it every bit as fun as any of the movies in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.

Stortebeker and Michels are foul-mouthed, toe-sucking, small-time high seas bandits. They’ve had some mild success, predicated on Klaus’s extraordinary nautical prowess, but their time and options are running out as the Hanseatic League, a corrupt, heavily bureaucratic trade federation increases in power and tightens down the clamps on activities like piracy. Mostly the two bros rob ships when they can, and spend the rest of their time drinking and chasing ladies. Their life combines brutal shipboard hand-to-hand combat with an easy, almost frat-boy type of chilled out sensibility. They love the freedom of the sea, just want to have a good time, and use pirating as a means to an end.

Their fortunes take a turn for the worse when their motley crew gets their asses handed to them in battle, and their ship sinks. Struggling to start over from scratch, they procure a beaten down vessel that barely floats, and comes with a dead body on board, an ominous omen. Add to that the fact that Klaus has lost his nerve, and becomes afraid of the sea and the wind, and the outlook for the friends is bleak. The crew mutinies and abandons Stortebeker and Michels in mid-ocean, and there is a definite time of existential-pirate-crisis, complete with a few suicide attempts. Fortunately they stumble upon a hidden piece of combat technology, a new weapon of mass destruction from the Far East—a big ass cannon—something none of their contemporaries have. Using their newfound advantage, Klaus gets his groove back, and they go on a tear of epic proportions, driving the Hanseatic League to the brink of bankruptcy and collapse. Of course they can’t have this, so they call in the big guns, and shit gets real.

Bros through thick and thin, Stortebeker and Michels have a good dynamic. Klaus is the romantic dreamer who longs for a simple life on a farm, and is easily emotionally wounded; while Godeke is a hothead who takes things too personally, never backs down from a fight, no matter what the consequences, and has tendency to get them into trouble, including pitting a single ship against a cruel, monolithic empire. The two sail on towards their ultimate doom with a cocky bravado and a gallows humor. Their relationship and back and forth is really what carries “12 Paces”, providing most of the emotional weight and dramatic tension. There are a few missteps, but nothing major, and certainly nothing that can’t quickly be forgiven with a dashing smile and a cavalier wave of a hand.

At it’s heart, “12 Paces Without A Head”, is about the quest for freedom, including all of the inherent risks, consequences, benefits, and dangers of such a search. Freedom, true freedom, has a high cost, and you have to be willing to accept the possibility of complete, absolute, tragic failure if you’re going to reach for that goal. The brutal, draining climactic scene, set to a Johnny Cash song, perfectly illustrates the detriments and sacrifice intrinsic in the quest to live a free live. In most cases it isn’t going to be entirely pretty. I hope “12 Paces” winds up with a distributor from SIFF, because I think it is a movie that a lot of people will really enjoy once they get the chance to see it.

'Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema' Book Review

When you think of Sweden you probably imagine the picturesque Scandinavian countryside, universal healthcare, and buxom young blond women, who, at least as portrayed by every sitcom of the 1980, are ditzy and easy. What you may not know, however, is that Sweden also has a long history of underground, sex fueled, out of control sexploitation films. In 1911 Sweden established the world’s first national film censorship board, which set off a century long battle between proprietors of sleaze and mayhem, the public, and the government.

'Fubar: Balls to the Wall' Movie Review

If you haven’t seen “Fubar” I only have one question for you. What the hell, man, are you serious? I’m not kidding around when I say these words, drop whatever you’re doing (and lets be honest, if you’re reading this, whatever you were doing wasn’t very important to begin with) and go rent it immediately. It’s one of those movies that as soon as I saw it for the first time I sat down everyone I encountered for the next week and forced them to watch it. And then they made everyone watch it, and they made everyone watch it, and it was like a giant pyramid scheme, only so, so good. One friend spent the entire movie gawking at the screen, giggling like a simple-minded idiot-boy, which in my book counts as glowing praise.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

As an actor, what do you say when your agent tells you that you’re up for a part, but that the part involves your face being attached to another actor’s ass for most of the movie? That probably doesn’t come up often, but it must have when writer/director Tom Six was casting his horror film “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)”.

The Horseman

You can tell “The Horseman” is going to be grim from the very first frame, when you see a teenage girl crying in an alley. Images like that don’t generally indicate that happy fun times lie ahead. What is coming is a rugged, badass tale of revenge.

Dante 01

After watching Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s newest film, “Micmacs”, I started to wonder what has become of Marc Caro. It was an easy question to answer; I simply hadn’t taken the time to ask it before. In 2008, he made his debut as a solo director with the science fiction film, “Dante 01”. To call it just a sci-fi movie does “Dante 01” a disservice. Not only does it inhabit the sci-fi realm, but it crosses neatly over into psychological horror, and rounds itself out as a prison movie, complete with a brutal shanking.

Orbiting high above the molten planet Dante, is the prison space station Dante 01. More than a simple prison, it is a psychiatric hospital for a handful the most violent offenders deep space has to offer. These prisoners are volunteers, they all would have been executed otherwise, and they participate in a range of psychiatric experiments, testing new procedures and protocols.

Fireball

For years now I’ve been staying that what basketball really needs is more spin kicks and flying knees (there are already plenty of elbows involved). Finally, in “Fireball”, I have found a kindred spirit, someone who agrees with me. “Fireball” the film prominently features Fireball the game, which is an underground, hybrid sport controlled by the heads of organized crime in Thailand. Fireball is all the fun of basketball, cage fighting, and Thunderdome, together at last. You can do whatever you can to stop the other team from scoring, things like kicking people in mid air, and tackling the guy with the ball, which is surprisingly similar to the way I played defense in my sportier days.

House (Hausu)

The reissue of “House” (“Hausu”) hurt my brain a little bit. The best description I can come up with for Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 psychedelic mind-fuck, is this, imagine if Sid and Marty Krofft made and “Evil Dead” movie. Obayashi based his feature length debut on an idea from his seven-year-old daughter. Sometimes I love kids, not often, but sometimes.

Micmacs

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films haven’t had the same feel since he went solo, breaking away from former collaborator Marc Caro. “Micmacs”, Jeunet’s latest project, hovers somewhere between the light fluffiness of “Amelie” and the surreal darkness of “Delicatessen” and “City of Lost Children”. Personally, I hope this is a sign of things to come. I miss the nightmarish dreamscapes of those earlier films, and would relish a return to the shadows.

French comedian Dany Boone plays Bazil. As a child his father was killed in a mishap with a discarded landmine, his mother sent to an institution, and Bazil wound up an orphanage where the overseeing nuns treated the children like tiny convicts. Grown up and clerking in a video store, a stray bullet from a drive-by catches Bazil in the dome. Removing the bullet could leave him a vegetable, so the doctor flips a coin and leaves the slug where it is. As a result Bazil could drop dead at any moment.

I Come With the Rain

“I Come With the Rain”, director Tran Anh Hung’s latest film, is a violent, atmospheric neo-noir detective yarn that bounces from Los Angeles to the Philippines, but ultimately settles and finds itself amidst the neon and glass skyscrapers of Hong Kong. It boasts an all-star international cast, a twisted story, and slick production.

A Prophet (Un prophète)

Jacques Audiard’s 2009 prison crime drama “A Prophet” (“Un prophète”) was nominated for and won an absurd amount of awards, including the prizes at Cannes, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and the Cèsar Awards, among numerous others, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. It was tapped for awards across the board, from acting and directing, to writing and cinematography.

Normally that amount of glowing praise raises some red flags for me since my tastes and opinions run somewhat askew to that of the critical mainstream. (I still think of Steven Seagal as a viable film star, that’s where I’m coming from.) However, in this case the admiration and worship are warranted. Not to sound like a jackass who thinks his opinion is important, but “A Prophet” is easily one of the best movies of 2009.

Tales From the Dead

“Tales From the Dead” has the unusual distinction of being a J-horror movie shot entirely in Los Angeles with local talent. It is an anthology of four ghost stories along the lines of “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Crypt”, though the stories themselves bear the most striking resemblance to those that appear in “Tales From the Darkside”.

I’m a fan of horror anthology shows, but there are some common pitfalls that entrap even the best of them. Chief among these is the length. Many of them only have 30-minute episodes, a feature that makes it difficult to set up everything necessary to make a story successful. Weekly shows have the benefit continuity, of being able to build things up over time and establish the story for the episode this week on the back of work that has already been done. The foundation is already in place. However, anthology shows have to start from scratch with each new episode, establishing setting, characters, conflict, tension, etc., which, in half an hour, can be problematic. Some pull it off, but others do not, a lot depends on the writing. (See the third season of “Tales From the Darkside” as an example where there are more misses than hits.)

Hard Revenge, Milly

Some unspecified disaster or environmental trauma has left Japan a post-apocalyptic wasteland, ruled by gangs of thugs. Tokyo is a wind swept desert, and Yokohama has regressed to futuristic version of the lawless Wild West.

Two years ago Milly’s (Miki Mizuno) life was perfect. She had a husband and a baby, and she was happy. But everything turned to shit when they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and encountered the Jack Brothers, the worst and most notorious of the gangs of drug dealers and criminals, on a day where they just felt like killing someone.

Slaughter Island

Originally published at BeyondHollywood.com.

At first glance, “Slaughter Island” looks like it is going to be nonstop gore covered T&A from start to finish. Now don’t get me wrong, you will see your fill of Japanese girls in bikinis splattered with blood, there is certainly no shortage of that, so if that’s your jam, you’re good. But somewhere along the line, director Hisaaki Nagaota manages to make a pretty decent horror movie that fits in nicely in the teens-in-the-wilderness/slasher/mystery killer type genre.

A group of ten friends who loosely think of themselves as an adventure club, though their adventuring primarily consists of partying on the beach, travel to a deserted island. Perhaps this is the mysterious phantom island that local legend tells about, the one that appears and disappears without warning, the one that no one has ever returned from alive. It makes for a good, creepy ghost story as the teens sit around the campfire.

Before long the teens start dying off one by one. Is there someone else on the island? Is it the island itself that is killing them? Are they dealing with something they can stop, or something supernatural that they have no chance against? When their boat disappears they find themselves stranded, with no hope of rescue since the skeevy guy, Nabuo, who led them to their doom, neglected to tell anyone on the mainland where they were going. Right away you know they’re screwed.

Nagaota takes a standard set up and tweaks it enough to make it interesting. The killing/haunting/whatever you want to call it is actually pretty original. I’m not going to tell you what it is because that will ruin the entire movie, but watching it, “Slaughter Island” does a nice job being creepy and creating an atmosphere of suspense and dread.

“Slaughter Island” is a good example of filmmakers doing a lot with a little. There isn’t much to this film. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense, but it is true. Here are the elements the film contains: teens, beaches, woods, and blood. There are no sets aside from a campfire and some tents, no effects except blood, and a small cast, but they still manage to make a decent movie. The film focuses on story instead of eye-catching gimmicks and unnecessary frills, and the end result is that much stronger for the emphasis.

This feels like a movie that a group of friends could have made quickly for little money. Normally when I say that I mean it as a negative, but here it works, and they produced something worthwhile.

The one aspect where the film’s minimalism might be a detriment is in the appearance. It is obviously shot on video with little to no industrialized lighting. This leads to a dreary, monochrome color palate. The colors are muted and blend together into a dull, lifeless background. Even bright colors, like yellows and pinks, somehow melt into the blues and greens and browns of the scenery. Sure this makes the blood pop that much more, the vivid red stands out in sharp contrast to everything else in the frame, but it makes the rest of the film appear flat and bland.

There are ultimately some unanswered questions in the story, like the implied connection between Nabuo and the island (at one point he claims to be “the guardian of the Island”), but in the end, they prove to be unimportant.

“Slaughter Island” may not be the best, or most frightening, movie, but it is pretty good. With minimal resources, the cast and crew manage to make a horror movie that, while not groundbreaking in any sense, is original enough to be entertaining and worth a look. This is proof that a decent idea can translate into something worth watching, regardless of budget.

Somtum

This originally appeared at BeyondHollywood.com.

“Somtum” has all the potential in the world, but ultimately ends up as kind of a mess.

Nathan Jones (“Tom-Young-Goong”, “The Condemned”) stars as Barney Emerald, a down on his luck Australian giant, who wins third place in a contest. This is one hell of a contest because third place, the bronze medal, is a trip to Thailand. That’s not a bad consolation prize. A life-long loser, Barney thinks his luck has changed. He couldn’t be more wrong. On his first night of vacation he gets drugged, robbed, and left barefoot and shirtless in a foreign country with no money and no passport.

At 6’11 and 360 pounds, Jones is a towering freak of a human being. His life has been nothing if not interesting. At one time he pulled off a string of bank robberies, and was one of Australia’s most wanted men. In prison he became a power lifter, and before a back injury, suffered in an arm wrestling match, he was a promising newcomer on the world strongman scene. Then he had a brief career as a professional wrestler, and now he acts in action movies, usually in bit parts as a tough guy the hero has to fight. In “Somtum”, however, he plays a gentle giant. He’s big, clothes don’t fit him, he snores, children often mistake him for some sort of monster or ghost, he appears comically large riding down the street on a scooter, you know, the usual trials and tribulations of the overly large.

Half naked, wandering the unfamiliar streets of Thailand, Barney runs into a young girl, Katen (Narawat Techarathanaprasert), while she flees from some thugs she ripped off. Even though Barney is enormous, he’s a pussy, and gets thoroughly trounced for trying to help.

Katen is an orphan and a hustler. A pickpocket and petty criminal, she lives with Dokya (Sasisa Jindamanee), a Muay Thai prodigy, and her mother, who runs a local somtum restaurant. Calling it a restaurant is being generous since it is more like a food shanty on the beach. Dokya can handle herself, but her mother hates that she fights, and makes her promise that she won’t, in or out of a ring.

The sisters feel bad for Barney, you know, since they got him beat up and all, and take him in. Barney is like a giant, dopey puppy. Think a Mastiff or Great Dane. He’s huge, but has no idea how big he is, or how much damage he can do. That is, until the girls feed him a plate of somtum. Apparently Barney doesn’t deal well with spicy food. He turns bright red, starts to hallucinate, and goes into an uncontrollable berserker rage, leveling the food shack in the process.

Now they need money to fix the restaurant. Barney is a loser with no friends, so he can’t get anyone back home to send him money. Their next idea is to have him fight in an underground fight club, but he’s just as adept at fighting as he is at everything else. He can’t dance, so he can’t become a stripper. Finally, they decide that Dokya will fight at the fight club, and in order to convince mom, Katen lies to her, telling her it’s a dance contest, while Dokya thinks mom has given her okay to fight.

The story gets convoluted and meanders around from scene to scene for a while. Some bad guys are involved in jewel heist, the fight promoter is crooked, Katen is a conniving little shit who makes every situation worse through lies and deceit. “Somtum” is more of a collection of scenes than a coherent plot. And because of that, most of the movie feels entirely directionless.

Once you get towards the middle of the movie there is more action throw into the mix, but it takes 40 minutes or so to arrive at this point. Even though there are guns and criminals present, “Somtum” is still obviously aimed at a younger audience. The fight scenes are sound, but, until the climactic fight, most of them belong to the same comic, slapstick family that you get in the less serious Jackie Chan movies.

Dokya’s sequences are solid, but Jindamanee is a junior national Muay Thai champ, so she can actually fight her ass off. At one point she has to fight a grown man in the ring and beats him down even though he cheats. Dan Chupong (“Ong-Bak 1, 2, and 3”) shows up for like five minutes, but he’s basically just in the movie to have one fight, which is good, but then he disappears from the narrative.

Aside from those two instances, the rest of the fights try way too hard to be funny, like one that features an excessive amount of papayas. And even in Chupong’s fight, when a bad guy grabs a knife, every jab or thrust finds a way to slice vegetables or dice onions like they’re preparing dinner. The forced attempts at comic relief get old quick.

At the end, Barney finally figures out how to fight, and in the sprawling battle he has with three other giants, they entirely dismantle an entire airplane. Jones is good at being enormous and frightening, and these moments are his best in the film. It’s a lot to ask of him to carry a whole movie sicne his acting chops are questionable, and his career will probably be best served by sticking to parts like his role in “Tom-Young-Goong”, where he mostly has to flex, yell, and fight. That’s where he is at his peak, and he could have a long and prosperous run in action movies. They always need another big, scary guy.

There are some good moment in “Somtum”, but overall the story lacks focus and drive, the plot is too jumbled, and the comedy is forced and not all that funny.

Power Kids

This originally appeared at BeyondHollywood.com.

Fuck “The Karate Kid.” Am I the only one who has a problem with the fact that, in a movie called “The Karate Kid,” he goes to China and learns kung fu? Looking at the box office returns from this past weekend it certainly looks that way. Why didn’t they just call it “The Karate Kid Learns Kung Fu”? Then I would have no problem with it.

My irrational anger notwithstanding, if you want to watch children fight, instead of wasting your time on this latest Hollywood rehash of one of my precious childhood memories (and on the same weekend at the “A Team” retread no less), you should watch “Power Kids”.

“Power Kids” is a product of Prachya Pinkaew (“Ong-Bak”, “Tom-Young-Goong”) and his Baa-Ram-Ewe production company, and translates the adrenalin fueled, Muay Thai action of his previous movies to kids. “Power Kids” is full to overflowing with adorable little children, who could beat the living hell out of me, running around, jumping off of things, and throwing flying knees. That’s why I love Thailand. American’s national sport is baseball, while theirs is the one of the world’s most brutal martial arts.

Wuth (Nantawooti Boonrapsap), Pong (Paytaai Wongkamlao), Catt (Sasisa Jindamanee), and Jib (Nawarat Techarathanathanprasert) are all students who live at Master Lek’s (Arunya Pawilai) Thai Boxing academy. I’m not sure where their parents are in all of this, but the only time any of their progenitors are mentioned is in relation to Pong, whose father is a famous country singer/comedian (Petchtai Wongkamlao, Dirty Balls from “Ong-Bak”, and also his real life father), but only appears in the film via photograph.

Despite being happy-go-lucky, junior badasses (they come together to beat up a giant muscle-man in a slapstick scene that shows their unity through groin pummeling), these kids have all the standard kid problems, bullies on four-wheelers, drunken Americans, the big RC-car race tomorrow, and, most pressing, congenital heart defects. Wuth’s younger brother, Wun, has a bad heart and collapses while fleeing some neighborhood toughs. The good news is that the doctors have found a suitable donor organ for transplant and are prepared to perform the operation, just in the nick of time. The bad news is that a group of heavily armed insurgents has taken over the hospital where the heart is, “Die Hard” style.

In four hours the heart will become unusable, so the kids know exactly what they have to do. They don’t even blink. Without pausing they invade the hospital, and the rest of the movie is little kids launching themselves off of things with reckless abandon, and bludgeoning fully grown soldiers, which is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

It is pretty obvious which of the child actors can actually fight. Most of the real action is delegated to Wuth and Catt, whose stunts and fight sequences are impressive for anyone, let alone kids this age. Pong and Jib are generally left to run around and evade the bad guys by hiding under a sheet next to dead bodies in the morgue. Pong is the comic relief, though his shtick wears thin after a while. The climactic fight between Wuth and Catt and the rebel leader (Johnny Nguyen, “Tom-Young-Goong”) in this narrow hallway, is a fitting final battle, and it includes the craziest action of the movie.

The kids are headstrong and brave, but this isn’t “Spy Kids” (which, despite the fact that no one believes me, is an incredible movie in it’s own right). The kids don’t single-handedly take down an armed insurrection and save the day. They’re not commandos, they don’t have a bunch of gadgets, they’re just kids. Also, unlike an American movie, these kids are actually in danger. They get shot, kicked, and beaten, and when this happens, they bleed their own blood. When guys with guns chase them, you feel like there is a real chance that you may see a kid get shot.

The end comes together too tidily to be entirely satisfying, but, unlike a lot of films featuring children, “Power Kids” avoids being overly sentimental and ending on a freeze frame of a group hug.

For my sake, do me a favor. Skip “The Karate Kid Learns Kung Fu”, and watch “Power Kids” instead. You’ll thank me for it later. “Power Kids” are way better than all of the Fresh Prince’s kids combined. And it’s short. The entire film, credits included, times out at 73 minutes.