Archive for the ‘Fantasy/Swords’ Category
Wednesday, December 6th, 2023
Okay, I know after 15 years many people have sort of fallen out of love with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I feel you. Maybe you’re looking forward to a world with fewer comic book movies. Fair enough.
But before you go can I interest you in Indonesia’s answer to the MCU real quick? A few years ago I reviewed the 2019 film GUNDALA, written and directed by Joko Anwar (SATAN’S SLAVES), based on an Indonesian comic book character from the ‘60s. I really liked it, and thought it was cool to see a super hero origin story that’s obviously inspired by the American ones, but based in the history, culture and cinematic traditions of Indonesia. Most specifically, for my tastes, that means it has a whole bunch of really great martial-arts-based action. So I was intrigued that it was meant to kick off something called the Bumilangit Cinematic Universe. In the MCU tradition it even had a little tag at the end introducing the heroine of movie #2 here, SRI ASIH. Then the whole endeavor got delayed by that bastard COVID-19, but it finally made its way to U.S. DVD (but I guess not blu-ray) this week under the insulting title SRI ASIH: THE WARRIOR.
Anwar is the executive producer of the whole series, and he co-wrote this one with its director, Upi Avianto (HIT & RUN), just credited as Upi. Pevita Pearce (MAY THE DEVIL TAKE YOU) stars as Alana, whose mom died giving birth to her four months early, during a volcanic eruption, in a car being chased by a demon-faced ash plume. So Alana grew up in an orphanage defending others from bullies until a rich lady named Sarita (Jenny Chang, also a mother in competing Indonesian comic book universe movie SATRIA DEWA: GATOTKACA) adopted her and taught her to be a fighter, who competes against men and is undefeated. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bumilangit Cinematic Universe, Chicco Jerikho, Christine Hakim, Dimas Anggara, Jenny Chang, Joko Anwar, Pevita Pearce, Revaldo, Reza Rahadian, Upi Avianto, Uwais Team, Very Tri Yulisman
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Fantasy/Swords | 6 Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2023
SAKRA is Donnie Yen’s 2023 passion project, which he stars in and co-directed (with Kam Ka-Wai, second assistant director of IP MAN 1 and 2). It’s a wuxia story based on a famous novel with the tough-sounding title Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils by Jin Yong.
Yen stars as Qiao Feng, an orphan raised by a couple in the Song Empire. He grows up to become the leader of the powerful Beggar Gang, whose legendary badassness is introduced in one of those classic scenes where somebody is being an asshole in public and our guy is quietly listening for a while and then gets inolved (see also: Blue Eye Samurai). A monk (Tsui Siu-Ming, KUNG FU KILLER) comes to this restaurant dragging a cage he says contains an “unruly” person he’s going to sacrifice, and Qiao Feng is sitting at a table on the balcony of a whole different establishment across the way when he starts loudly talking shit without even looking at him. The monk is like “What the fuck – is that guy talking to me?” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cheung-Yan Yuen, Cya Liu, Donnie Yen, Kam Ka-Wai, Kenji Tanigaki, Ray Lui, Tsui Siu-Ming, Wu Yue, wuxia
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 20 Comments »
Thursday, November 9th, 2023
I think it’s safe to say that Olga Kurylenko is one of our reigning Queens of Action. She’s been in the trenches for many years, in many different sizes of roles and films (HITMAN, MAX PAYNE, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, OBLIVION, THE NOVEMBER MAN, SENTINELLE, THE PRINCESS, EXTRACTION II), and she only seems to get better and better, especially when she’s headlining.
Like some of her male counterparts she has unattainable looks but such a strong screen presence she can still read as tough and/or relatable. She’s often required to portray a wider range of emotions than the fellas usually are, while also looking good kicking and stabbing and scowling. And in the tradition of Scott Adkins and others, when they finally put her in one of the big super hero movies (BLACK WIDOW) they gave her kind of a ho-hum character unworthy of her abilities. So she’s definitely one of our people. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: barbarians, Clive Standen, Dominiquie Vandenberg, female barbarians, historical drama, Jesse V. Johnson, Leo Gregory, Lucy Martin, Nick Moran, Olga Kurylenko, Peter Franzen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, August 30th, 2023
August 26, 1983
In my opinion the most unusual and most accomplished of the summer of ’83 fantasy movies – which admittedly just means it’s better than KRULL, PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE, YOR – THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE and HERCULES – is Ralph Bakshi’s FIRE AND ICE. An animator for Terrytoons in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Bakshi had knocked the animated feature game off its axis with the independent, adults-only movies FRITZ THE CAT (1972), HEAVY TRAFFIC (1973), and COONSKIN (1975) before pivoting to fantasy specialist with WIZARDS (1977) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978). He had even been attached to direct Oliver Stone’s script for CONAN THE BARBARIAN, the movie that (directed by John Milius) made these sorts of sword and sorcery movies big business for a while.
Bakshi says he lost the gig by telling Arnold Schwarzenegger he’d have to lose weight, so I believe he was expecting to do it in live action, not animation. But his films from this period kind of split the difference between mediums – LORD OF THE RINGS and then AMERICAN POP (1981) made heavy use of rotoscoping, basically filming a version of the movie with actors for the animators to draw over frame by frame. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: fantasy sword dudes, Frank Frazetta, Gerry Conway, James Gurney, Leo Gordon, Peter Chung, Ralph Bakshi, Roy Thomas, Susan Tyrrell, Thomas Kinkade, William Ostrander
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 28th, 2023
August 26, 1983
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first movie experience was playing Hercules in the comedy HERCULES IN THE NEW YORK (1970). Here, thirteen years later, his PUMPING IRON opponent Lou Ferrigno played the character in a serious (but still laughable) Greek-mythology-meets-’80s-sci-fi-fantasy epic – his second movie role. Like Arnold in his debut, Ferrigno’s voice is dubbed (by Marc Smith, who played a mafia boss in CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER and later became a prolific anime dubber). He had turned down other movie offers, but had also been obsessed with Steve Reeves’ Hercules movies growing up, and jumped at the chance to follow in his hero’s footsteps.
It’s definitely a movie made in a post-STAR WARS world, with mythological creatures depicted as robots and a poster painted by Drew Struzan. It’s also clearly inspired by the existence of Arnold’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN, even introducing adult Hercules on the Wheel of Pain, though without dissolving from a younger version. They were able to steal the image, but not what was cool about it.
Most of all it strikes me as a poor man’s CLASH OF THE TITANS, with its gods sitting around on the moon talking about how to control human affairs. But let me tell you, its stop motion sequences do not deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as. Ray Harryhausen’s. Important information I neglected to mention: this is produced by Cannon Films and directed by “Lewis Coates,” a.k.a. Luigi Cozzi (STARCRASH, CONTAMINATION). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cannon Films, Claudio Cassinelli, Delia Boccardo, Eva Robins, Lou Ferrigno, Luigi Cozzi, Marc Smith, Mirella D'Angelo, Pino Donaggio, Rossana Podesta, Sybil Danning, William Berger
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Friday, August 25th, 2023
August 19, 1983
METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN is yet another sci-fi/fantasy/adventure released in the summer of RETURN OF THE JEDI that seems like it wouldn’t have existed without STAR WARS. In fact, a 1983 Cinefantastique article quotes screenwriter Alan J. Adler (PARASITE, THE CONCRETE JUNGLE) saying that he “packed my bags and left town for Los Angeles” when he saw STAR WARS. To be fair, this particular movie seems much more inspired by THE ROAD WARRIOR, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Before seeing them, I always mixed this up with SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, without realizing they were released a few months apart, and both in 3D. Now that I’ve seen them I know that they actually are kind of similar – both have a tough bounty hunter guy driving around a wasteland planet in large all-terrain vehicle, fighting mutants and warlords and shit while searching for someone. Dogen (Jeffrey Byron, HOT RODS TO HELL) is a “Finder,” and instead of trying to rescue some abducted tourists he’s trying to kill a wizard guy named Jared-Syn (Michael Preston, Pappagallo from ROAD WARRIOR), who’s trying to do a, like… evil crystal thing. Because the treaty with the Nomads was violated, I believe is what Dogen says. You know how it is. Gotta stop that, obviously. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Alan J. Adler, Charles Band, Jeffrey Byron, Kelly Preston, Larry Pennell, Michael Preston, R. David Smith, Richard Moll, Tim Thomerson
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 27 Comments »
Monday, August 21st, 2023
August 15, 1983
There are a few more to go but I have a strong feeling PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE is gonna be the crappiest fantasy/sci-fi type movie in this historic summer of Jedi returns. I’m sure the terrible, washed out transfer on the DVD I rented doesn’t help – it’s a “Grindhouse Double Shock Show” paired with the 1979 Italian film STAR ODYSSEY – but everything about the production seems low rent. It’s all very ugly and low energy, filmed mostly just out in a rocky area somewhere, with acting and dialogue that made my wife ask if I was watching a porno. Then she decided it looked like the “Safety Dance” video, which is a very good comparison, although honestly with lower production value. I would bet that there was less time between conception and release than it took to animate the spider in KRULL.
The director and co-writer is Englishman Terry Marcel, his followup to HAWK THE SLAYER, but the cast is American and it’s filmed in South Africa. That’s why even though it opens in what we’re told is L.A. all the cars have the steering wheels on the right side. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Saxon, Kay Lenz, Richard Hatch, Terry Marcel
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 9 Comments »
Friday, July 28th, 2023
On July 29, 1983, the same day Luis Bunuel died, and two days after the release of Madonna’s debut album, Columbia Pictures released their entry in the “if you liked RETURN OF THE JEDI…” sweepstakes, KRULL. With the resources of a studio behind it, KRULL was able to be bigger than most of the other also-rans, having double the budget of SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, for example. It even got a release in 70mm. It boasts a new score by James Horner that sounds kinda like BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, instead of re-using the actual score from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS like SPACE RAIDERS did. Notably it has the same cinematographer as THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Peter Suschitzky. Editor Ray Lovejoy is the guy who did 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. So it’s quite a crew here.
The director is Peter Yates (BULLITT, THE HOT ROCK, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED, THE DEEP), one of the many British directors George Lucas had considered for RETURN OF THE JEDI. Screenwriter Stanford Sherman was a TV guy (Man from U.N.C.L.E./Batman) but had done ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN. Unfortunately he did not include a punching orangutan in this one. Could’ve used one, to be honest. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alun Armstrong, Bernard Bresslaw, Freddie Jones, James Horner, John Welsh, Ken Marshall, Liam Neeson, Lindsay Crouse, Lysette Anthony, Peter Suschitzky, Peter Yates, Robbie Coltrane, Stanford Sherman
Posted in Reviews, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 27 Comments »
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
Somehow I, a person fascinated with both Ronny Yu’s kangaroo kung fu movie WARRIORS OF VIRTUE (1997) and the medium of unlikely DTV sequels, lived for many years unaware of the existence of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE 2: RETURN TO TAO (2002). Once I did learn of it I found it in a DVD collection called “6 Family Fantasy-Adventure Movies” along with the other Miramax library titles PINOCCHIO (2002), NEVERWAS (2007), A WRINKLE IN TIME (2003), THE NEVERENDING STORY III: ESCAPE FROM FANTASIA (1996) and, in a strange coincidence, MERLIN’S APPRENTICE (2005), directed by Yu’s frequent editor and BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR 2 director David Wu. They also released it as a double feature with that version of BEOWULF starring Christopher Lambert. It has no Ronny Yu involvement and, worse, no kangaroo involvement, which I’m sure is why nobody ever heard about it. I mean, if there’s a movie where April O’Neill is trying to find the Ninja Turtles and when she does they “lost their powers” so they’re just people wearing different colored headbands then I never heard of that one either. Though I kind of want to.
But obviously it is my professional and ethical duty to extend my tangent from the actual Ronny Yu movies until such a time as I have reviewed this DTV spin-off. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dennis K. Law, Kentucky Robinson, Kevin Tod Smith, Michael Vickerman, Nathan Phillips, Nina Liu, Rex Piano, Shedrack Anderson III
Posted in Reviews, Family, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, April 19th, 2023
I guess this is a weird reason to revisit a family fantasy classic that’s treasured around the world, but I felt like after spending so much time on WARRIORS OF VIRTUE I had an ethical duty to review another first-English-language-movie-by-an-internationally-acclaimed-director, THE NEVERENDING STORY. I saw it in the theater 39 years ago and I remembered it enough to know WARRIORS kinda ripped off its kid-picked-on-by-bullies-given-large-leatherbound-book-magically-connected-to-a-fantasy-world format. I did not remember that in this one the kid just reads about the fantasy world, he doesn’t go there. But there was another detail that did stick in my brain, one that I had to question because it seems so fucking crazy: could it possibly be true that there are no kung fu animals in this one at all? Believe it or not, that is true. What the fuck kind of lunatic wants a story without kung fu animals to never end!? It’s absurd! But somehow they make it work.
Watching it again, I laughed at how quickly it gets into it – not the fantasy world, but the theme song. Limahl and Beth Anderson crooning “The Neverending Stoooor-ryyy, ooo ooow ooh oooowoo ooh, the Neverending Stooor-ryyy…” over Giorgio Moroder synths and footage of clouds. One thing this opening sequence gets across very clearly is that if you want to see a movie called THE NEVERENDING STORY, you came to the right place.
The kid is named Bastian, played by Barret Oliver (Kid #2, UNCOMMON VALOR). We don’t see too much of his life, but we pick up on a few things. His mom died fairly recently. His dad (Gerald McRaney, MOTORCYCLE GANG) is emotionally distant and tells him to keep his head out of the clouds, which the credits already told us is the opposite of what you gotta do in a neverending story. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barret Oliver, Deep Roy, Gerald McRaney, German cinema, Giorgio Moroder, Michael Ende, Thomas Hill, Wolfgang Petersen
Posted in Reviews, Family, Fantasy/Swords | 28 Comments »
