Magnificent Warriors

Fight Like A Gal

Magnificent Warriors
aka Dynamite Fighters
aka Zhong hua zhan shi
Hong Kong 1987
Directed by David Chung
D & B Films
Eureka Blu Ray Zone B

I’ve been quite taken with Michelle Yeoh, since seeing her at the cinema in 1997 as the new ‘Bond girl’ opposite Pierce Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies (reviewed here). I was aware even then that she was probably not used to letting other people perform her stunts, which she would have sorted out herself in many of these early Hong Kong movies but, as I watched her career with interest (and congratulations to her for winning the Oscar for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - reviewed by me here), I’d never seen any of those pre-Bond roles. However, between them, British boutique labels such as Arrow Films, 88 Films and, in this case, Eureka Master of Cinema, have finally cottoned on that kung fu films will sell by the bucket load to English audiences, who have hitherto had to pursue bootleg recordings of a lot of these titles. Now, I had no idea which Michelle Yeoh movie I wanted to see first from her early career but then I saw a trailer for this release and realised, yeah, Magnificent Warriors was probably the one.

So, this is set in the 1930s and, I think it would be true that the influence of the then recent US blockbuster movies Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom are very much in evidence here. Michelle Yeoh had not made more than a handful of movies before this and not necessarily action based ones either, but here her training as a dancer and willingness to work hard pays off as she is, front and centre, the main protagonist of this one. Although she’s not an archeologist but a pilot in this. One might say she’s an anti-heroine because she’s also a gun runner, carrying arms in her biplane but, one has to take into account that the film is set historically during the Japanese invasion/occupation of China... so she is very much a resistance fighter, in some ways, to help stop her people being repressed.

And it’s the look and feel of her character which mostly distills the spirit of Indiana Jones more than anything else... as the film is obviously also influenced by various Hong Kong and Hollywood films before those, which also would have fed into the Spielberg films as much as they do here. So Yeoh’s character Ming-Ming wears the leather jacket and uses her bullwhip in ways much more interesting than her American visual counterpart. She really kicks backside in this movie and is especially good with a weapon which, being as ignorant in the art and instruments of war as I am, I can only describe as a pointy, dagger thing on a rope. Certainly, these must have been really intensive shoots (scheduled to their main locations for three weeks but actually taking three months, by all accounts) and the cast must have been left bruised and bloody after each day’s filming. When I watched the sequence where she was flicking the rope all around and spinning it over her head etc, it put me in mind of the same moves used by the Go Go Yubari character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume One. Not saying he got that from here, by the way, I’m sure this choreography is not unique... just drawing the similarity to more widely seen films to aid the brevity of what kind of fighting moves you can see on display here.

And yeah, it’s a rip roaring movie with some good chemistry between all the lead protagonists such as Richard Ng, Tung-Shing Yee and Chindy Lau. There’s lots of humour thrown into the mix too, as Ming-Ming is tasked with rescuing a stranded secret agent who is, in turn, tasked with stopping the Japanese troops from taking over a village community and using the main building as a factory to manufacture their new poisonous gas... there’s even a scene which is reminiscent (or vice versa) of the ‘testing the gas’ scene in Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman movie (reviewed here).

Combine the humour and acting chops with a plot filled to the brim with action and not much room for anything else and, well, you’re definitely onto a winner with this particular audience member. I would have to say that the film’s main weakness might be that the action scenes don’t feel like they lead to a satisfying climax. There’s a long battle scene at the end which pitches the Japanese forces against the Chinese villagers defending their city and it’s certainly fine and explosive enough... but I felt the more interesting action sequences were the ones in the first half of the film, which concentrated on hand to hand combat. So, yeah, it felt a little anticlimactic to me. I was also... and this is no fault of the film... a little disappointed with the liner notes in the accompanying booklet (I should have perhaps waited for a cheaper reissue without the booklet and slipcase, I think). For example, the listing on the back makes great play of it having its original theatrical ending, not seen on home video before. But, there’s nowhere in the packaging that tells you what the difference was, where that ending starts from and why it was cut out. Absolutely no idea. It might be mentioned on one of the two commentary tracks on the disc but, yeah, I rarely have time to do the commentary tracks these days, it has to be said.

Anyway, it’s still a cracking little movie and the print and transfer on this are pretty good. I’ve not seen Magnificent Warriors before but I’ve no doubt this is probably the best way to see it. I really enjoyed this one and might look at seeing what other early Michelle Yeoh films I can get hold of at some point*.

*The writing of this review pre-dates my viewing of Yes, Madam (reviewed here) but I wanted to put this current batch of Hong Kong reviews into some kind of chronological order.

Doctor Who - The Reality War

Paying The Piper

Doctor Who
The Reality War
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 31st May 2025

Warning: All the spoilers.

I’m not so much as angry with The Reality War, the latest and possibly last episode of Doctor Who as I am...  disappointed with it. Primarily because what Russell T. Davies cooked up for both last season and this season, regarding the season finales, smacks of the one thing a previous showrunner (Steven Moffat) was really bad at... that is to say, setting up all these threads, teasing great things and then, well, kind of dropping the ball at the last minute. 

This one ran way over the scheduled episode length according to the Radio Times so... I’m guessing people who were relying on it to run to time, since there was no pre-iplayer version... were possibly angry they were all half an hour out on their schedules. But before I talk about the things which went wrong... and the, kinda, nice things about the episode, lets do a quick story summary. 

The Rani’s bring back Omega from the underverse of the wish world version of Earth but, yeah, it’s a quick mythical version of Omega who promptly eats the latest regeneration of the Rani... although Anita Dobson’s Mrs. Flood version of the character manages to escape to somewhere else. Perhaps it was a case of having a Rani knows moment. It’s up to The Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra and Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday (who still seems to be a major dangling plot thread in terms of identity, if you ask me), along with several members of UNIT and Anita from the Joy To The World Christmas special (reviewed here), played by Steph de Whalley and now working at the Time Hotel... to put a stop to things and restore the world back to reality... including saving the Doctor’s daughter (who’s not his actual daughter, it turns out) and bringing on the expected regeneration at the end. Yup... and I’ll get to who he regenerates into in a little while, because it is revealed, in what I suspect is a last ditch attempt to bring back old viewers and avoid cancellation.

Okay... so the new thing about the timelords being sterile... if this is a new thing since the latest few iterations then that’s fine but if it is supposed to be going back to the original shows then, it completely contradicts The Doctor having a granddaughter at all. 

And talking about Susan Foreman... everyone was pleased to see Carole Ann Ford coming back as a cameo in the last two episodes. People were excited to see how it would unfold in this final episode to see her finally reunited with The Doctor. Well guess what folks? It didn’t happen. She’s not in the episode and doesn’t really get much reference either. That, I think, was a bit of a mistake which I’m sure fans of the show will be grumbling about. I’m glad the teased Rogue return didn’t happen though. Also, that will probably annoy some fans, I suspect.

Meanwhile... the big bad reveal of Omega turned out to be... some kind of mythical ‘wished into existence’ version who lasts about five minutes before The Doctor vanquishes him back to the same dimension. Bit quick for a villain who once had to have three incarnations of The Doctor present to defeat him. Um... a bit rubbish too. 

I didn’t really like the Back To The Future tyre tracks that UNIT lady left with her wheelchair as a joke either. Kinda felt almost a little too throw away if you ask me.

So, as far as all that goes... an optimistic but also bitter sweet finale which, honestly, just got bogged down in a lot of exposition and really felt quite a bit draggingly dull at some points. Not to mention the terrible, retrofitting ‘flashbacks’ to conversations which Belinda had which, yeah, just reminded me of the whole ‘who is Ruby’s mother fiasco?’ at the end of the last season. It was just cheap and not terribly clever. Some might say awful (yeah, okay, that’s what I said too). 

Okay, so wouldn’t put many thumbs up or recommend this episode to anyone at all, really. The teased out promises turned out to actually be much more than the finale could bear... even with the unscheduled extra half an hour. 

Now then. There were a few nice things. Firstly, Anita Dobson’s joke about The Two Rani’s followed up with “And it’s good night from me!”... well. I loved that even as I was wondering just who, apart from the 50 plus British audience in the world, would even understand that joke. For all those people wondering, look up an old British TV comedy show called The Two Ronnies, with Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker. 

Secondly, it was really nice to see Jody Whittaker back as The Doctor. I always loved her portrayal, even though I lamented she hardly ever had any good scripts to work with. It was good to see she’s willing to return to the show if needed. Although, where the Earth bound(ish), retired David Tennant incarnation was during all this with, you know, his extra much needed TARDIS, is anybody’s guess. To quote Ellen Ripley in Aliens... did IQs suddenly drop?

Thirdly... it was also really nice seeing Anita back from the Christmas special. A lot of fans wanted that to happen. She seemed really wasted here though and didn’t have anything to do in terms of the emotional impact she had when we first met her so... yeah, good and bad at the same time.

Fourthly... and this is a kind of double edged sword... I called it when I had a conversation with some friends a few weeks back when I said that, when The Doctor inevitably regenerates at the end of the last episode... they would either end the show mid-regeneration or, if they were smart, get back a really big superstar which would pull in financial backers to bring the show back and ward off cancellation. Alas, although I loved seeing The Doctor regenerate into... Billie Piper at the end of the show (who has now played three different characters in the modern era of Doctor Who, with this iteration)... I’m not sure if she’s a big enough pull to get people back on board with another show resurrection. At least not with American audiences (which is where the big money is)... which is a shame because I’m all for it. It’s almost like the writers and producers said, we’ll bring Billie Piper back... Because We Want To. And, it has to be said... just to remind you all... this is not the first time The Doctor has regenerated into a person he’s already met and accidentally changed into their face. I might mention Colin Baker and Peter Capaldi here. Not ot mention the reappearance of David Tennant a couple of years ago. And don’t get me started on Lalla Ward’s regeneration of Romana.

I guess we’ll know soon enough whether the show gets cancelled or not. Meanwhile, next year’s apparently Doctorless UNIT VS Sea Devils spin off, The War Between The Land And The Sea, was trailered after the show and all I can say is... it looks pretty awful, to be honest. I mean... yeah... I hope the trailer truly isn’t reflective of the content but... again, time will tell I guess.

And that’s me done for a while, with The Reality War and the modern era of Doctor Who at least. There are still reviews coming, soon and less sooner, for stories starring various past Doctors from the classic series so, yeah, blog posts on these will be forthcoming, at some point soon. And with that I’ll finish this review by saying... and it’s good night from me. 

PS.  One last thing... thanks so much to the anonymous individual who has been leaving comments on my recent Doctor Who posts. Firefox won't let me reply and I just haven't got enough time right now to go through the whole rigmarol with Safari each time to have to re-log in and respond. But please know, whoever you are, that your comments are very welome and, like I said, thank you.

The Roaring Twenties

Speak Easy And
Carry A Big Stick

The Roaring Twenties
USA 1939 Directed by Raoul Walsh
Warner Brothers
Criterion Blu Ray Zone B
Spine Number 1208

“He used to be a big shot.”
Gladys George in The Roaring Twenties.

Take a quick glimpse at my all time favourite movies list on the right of this blog and you’ll notice that The Roaring Twenties is not on there (as are a few other ommissions such as Wonder Woman, I need to update that thing). This is a surprise even to me because, during my teenage years and early twenties, I used to watch this movie a good number of times every year. It was one of my all time favourites and I don’t know how I managed to let it slip off that list. Maybe because I haven’t now revisited it in over thirty years but, here I am now watching it again in a wonderful restored version on The Criterion Collection, no less.

Now, regular readers of my blog may remember that I’m definitely not a fan of gangster movies... they always remind me of the hoodlums and thugs encountered in life at school as a kid so, most of them punch too close to home for me. But I always make an exception for The Roaring Twenties because, frankly, it’s director Raoul Walsh’s masterpiece and easily one of the greatest pieces of art in American cinema.

The film tells the story of Eddie Bartlett, played by James Cagney in what would be his last gangster role for ten years (when he returned to the genre for the director’s also excellent gangster picture White Heat). The film opens towards the end of the first world war, where Bartlett is pals with George, played by Humphrey Bogart at his most villainous... and young lawyer Lloyd, played by Jeffrey Lynn. It says everything about Eddie’s two friends when Lloyd has a German soldier in his sights and then lowers his rifle because the kid looks like he could be no more than 15 years of age. George promptly shoots the kid dead, declaring “He won’t be 16!”. Its at this moment they find out the war is over and the armistice has been signed.

So the three go their separate ways and, after briefly meeting his love interest for the movie, Jean, played by Priscilla Lane (who goes on to hook up with both Eddie and Lloyd in a bizarre, post Hays Code love triangle)... well, like many returning ‘heroes’ of The Great War, Eddie finds his old job as a mechanic gone and with nowhere to go except to stay with his best friend, taxi driver Danny (played wonderfully well by Cagney’s good friend Frank McHugh). Danny and Eddie share shifts on the cab Danny owns but a new opportunity awaits them at the beginning of prohibition in 1920 and the film’s other leading lady, Panama Smith, played by the wonderful Gladys George, helps get Eddie into the bootlegging business. This is something Lloyd helps with, acquiring taxi cabs as a distribution system for Eddie, who becomes a huge kingpin of prohibition bootlegging.

Then, when Eddie and his gang are disguised as coastguards and intercepting a delivery meant for another gang boss, he hooks up with George again who joins his outfit. Shenanigans ensue as the two downward spiral into a world of crime and violence at a time when the average American public saw the bootleggers as the romantic adventurers supplying them with underground alcohol at the time of an immensely unpopular law.

And at this point, we get to the two things which finish Eddie and his empire off for good and turn him into a broken down, broken hearted (after he finds out about Jean and Lloyd), struggling taxi driver once more. The Wall Street Crash of 1929, followed by the end of prohibition in 1933. Eddie sells out his business to George, who leaves him just the one cab for old times sake. Then, a little later, George is in the hot seat from a prosecution by legal eagle Lloyd and, George decides Lloyd needs shutting up for good, even though he’s married to Jean and has a four year old son. At this point, the demolished man that was Eddie Bartlett steps in once more to... well, I won’t spoil the ending for you but it’s emotional and also features one of the most haunting last lines of any movie committed to celluloid.

If you’ve not seen The Roaring Twenties, you probably won’t understand why I tend to tear up slightly whenever I hear somebody sing Melancholy Baby but, yeah it gets me every time and you really should take a look at this if film is your thing. The crisp, black and white photography (brought out a treat by the latest Criterion edition), the powerful acting performances* (especially from James Cagney and Gladys George, who should both have got Oscars for this thing), the epic scope of the picture and the amazing, historic montage sequences (edited by a young Don Siegel, no less) all make for what... well, I’ll say it again... it’s an absolute masterpiece of cinema and you need to see this one. Absolute brilliance at all levels at a time when the Breen Office required a lot of changes to the original script but, what is implied rather than obviously made implicit here is, in some ways, even more effective. An absolute stand out... as close to a perfect movie as you can get, I would say. Add this to your shelves or watch list for sure.

*And spare a thought for those old actors before explosive squibs were used in films sometime in the 1940s and onward. When you see a bullet land inches from an actor to hit a brick wall by his or her face... or see a couple of windows shot out behind where said actor is running, as you often do, remember these ‘effects’ were done with live ammo! Sharpshooters off set would be firing where the actors weren’t and, if the actor didn’t hit their mark... well, the incentive to get the shots and the actors to make sure they were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there was pretty strong, alright.

The Phoenician Scheme

Phoenician Blind

The Phoenician Scheme
Directed by Wes Anderson
Germany/USA 2025
Indian Paintbrush
UK Cinema Release Print

Well, you know more or less what you are getting when you go to see a Wes Anderson movie and I’m very happy to report back that, yes, it’s yet another masterpiece which, in a few moments, actually had me laughing out loud... which I don’t usually do, even with comedies. It just happens that in this case, The Phoenician Scheme has a gradual build up where the absurdist situations and dead pan delivery of the various characters becomes suddenly joyful in the manner of the director’s previous movies.

Some of the usual suspects make up the cast (and some newcomers) with the main protagonists of this being the fantastic Benicio Del Toro as wealthy businessman Zsa-Zsa Korda (obviously derived from Zsa-Zsa Gabor and Alexander Korda, I would say), his almost a nun, possible daughter and heir Liesl (played brilliantly by Mia Threapleton) and new tutor Bjorn, played by Michael Cera. Other big names include Hope Davis, Jeffrey Wright, Willem Dafoe, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch and, in the role of God, Bill Murray.

Now, I probably didn’t completely understand the plot because I don’t have a financial brain but it involves Korda, Liesl and Bjorn globetrotting to procure funding for Korda’s latest series of profitable building investments while trying to escape industrial espionage and almost daily assassination attempts. Korda has a reputation for being killed a lot and, in the few minutes he spends dead between each horrendous injury, he goes into monochrome visions of a trial in heaven... where information is sometimes imparted to him.

The film probably shouldn’t work as well as it does and, I’m sure for those people who are not an admirer of the directors rigidly controlled compositions (in this movie they’re in pretty much a locked in 1.33:1 aspect ratio throughout) and comedic literal dialogue exchanges, this would probably seem like an interminable experience. I absolutely loved it though and people who are into this director’s meticulous take on the details and minutia of various characters should have a blast with this one too.

Backed up by Alexandre Desplat’s wonderful score (which is outrageously not on a CD soundtrack album at time of writing), the film is fast paced and starts off literally with a bang, during the first of many assassination attempts made throughout the movie. Indeed the incredibly violent thing which happens in the top right corner of the screen in a shot in an aircraft, deliberately signalled to the audience by a sound that seems to come from the left, is a great tool for future scenes set in an identical aircraft (of which there are many as the characters travel from country to country)... as the audience will no doubt be worrying about just what is about to happen every time they hear that first sound when the composition of the shot is, more or less, the same.

The film has a pretty good ending too... I’m not sure if it completely ties into the biblical imagery littered throughout the movie but there’s certainly a form of redemption for one of the characters in this, it seemed to me. But, either way, The Phoenician Scheme sings along at around 100 minutes and, frankly, I would have liked to have been watching it for another couple of hours more. I’ll certainly be scooping up the Blu Ray of this one as soon as it gets a release and would wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of cinema. Wes Anderson makes such good movies. Bring on the next one.

Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning

AIs Wide Shut

Mission Impossible
The Final Reckoning
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
USA 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Spoilers for the last movie.

Okay... so right up front I will say that, since I thought the last film in this mostly wonderful franchise was a bit dull and, since there’s been a lot of word of mouth and critical response that the first hour or so of this one is pretty dreary before it picks up, I was going into Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (which should rightly be called Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2 but I suspect there’s a very good reason it isn’t, perhaps to do more with the box office returns on the last one rather than any superstitious caveats the main lead has with the number two) with not so high hopes. So right up front I would like to refute all those claims because, frankly, I had at least as much fun with the pre-submarine sequences in this as I did with the rest of the movie. Perhaps more than the rest of it to an extent.

This one sees the return of most of the crew from the previous three films... Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames (alas, my favourite character played by Rebecca Ferguson was killed off in the last installment) along with recent new regulars Hayley Atwell and the increasingly brilliant Pom Klementieff. Plus assorted newcomers.

Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character is in hiding, now possessing both parts of the cruciform key needed to lift the next gadget to help bring down the Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as The Entity, which is gradually taking control of the nuclear arsenals of the world for a big bang day to wipe out humanity. It’s obviously down to Cruise and some new, acquired on the job team members (including an absolutely brilliant call back character who was a very minor character in one sequence of the first film and played by the same actor... who’s has a lot more to do here and is just fantastic) to help him in his quest.

It’s fast and furious and everybody is really good, with some intense scenes between the president (played by the great Angela Bassett) and her staff, who want to start the nuclear war just a little early. Can Cruise and co come through in time? Well, the highly improbable set of split timing sequences which make this a possibility, leading to a thing which has to be timed blindly to within literally a blink of an eye, requires... people performing the usual superhuman style antics which takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, for sure.

Now the two big action set pieces of the last two hours of the movie were, to me, a little dull... a submarine suspense sequence and a bi-plane suspense sequence (I prefer the more punch punch, shooty shooty explosion style set pieces myself) but all in all I’d say this film has a much more even tone than the last one and it is, I’m glad to say, a fair bit better than that one (even with the exclusion of Rebecca Ferguson). The score by franchise newcomers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey is serviceable but seems to be lighter on the Lalo Schifrin themes than some of them... that being said, since it’s so far not had a proper CD release at time of writing  (just a rubbish digital and scratchy vinyl release) it may be that I don’t ever get to hear it away from the movie, which would be a shame.

All in all, I didn’t find this film at all slow and I’m scratching my head at some of the comments by the critics. A criticism would be that Shea Whigham’s character did not, this time around, need an almost ‘so tacked on it seems fake’ callback to one of the characters in the first movie... that was kind of dumb and unnecessary, I thought. However, having said that, I’d like to throw out a big shout out to Rolf Saxon and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who were both brilliant here. Not to mention Love Lies Bleeding star Katy O’Brian, who doesn’t have much to do here but who certainly has a lot of screen presence.

And that’s me done with Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning other than to say... final reckoning my backside. Cruise and his cast and crew could easily make another one of these if they change their minds and the big bad of the movie could also easily be brought back if that is what the writers intend. Not the best of the Mission Impossible films (that would be this one, here) but nowhere near the worst of them and with some nice shout backs which tie it back to a number of the previous films too. Works well at the cinema and would probably suit a big TV set too, I suspect.

Doctor Who - Wish World

Oh Me Gawd

Doctor Who - Wish World
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 24th May 2025

Warning: full disclosure, full spoilers.

Ncuti Gatwa’s The Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda awake as husband and wife, living in a world where they have a daughter and the inhabitants of a much changed Earth are discouraged to doubt this version of reality. A version of reality created by Conrad from Lucky Day (reviewed here) and both the new versions of The Rani, played by Anita Dobson and Archie Panjabi. This episode also stars a fair few regulars such as Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday and Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush.

Now, Wish World isn’t a fantastic episode of Doctor Who by a long shot but it is quite a good one and some of the ideas, such as mugs slipping through tables and smashing to signify the emergence of doubt are really quite nicely done. So I find it very irritating and somewhat alarming that the writing on the show (this time by Russel T. Davies himself) is actually beginning to find its form again. Because, quite frankly, after the damage done by the over wokeness and lack of any real wow factor of last year’s series, they might even be producing some of the greatest televisual art the world has ever seen if they wanted to (they're not) but the damage has already been done and those low, low ratings aren’t likely to recover anytime soon.

We had another brief glimpse of Susan Foreman, The Doctor’s granddaughter once more, not to mention last season’s awful character Rogue but, the first of those appearances is something I hope the writing will take into account for the conclusion of this story arc next week. As far as Rogue goes... please don’t bring him back or maybe they could just kill him off. And if you do bring him back, well... since he has the same number of letters in his name, at least make him be one and the same as the promised ‘big bad’ of next week’s final episode... renegade time lord Omega, perhaps in an incarnation before he first encountered the first three Doctors in the 1973 serial The Three Doctors (reviewed by me here) and his later 1983 appearance in the fifth Doctor story Arc Of Infinity.

Either way, after such a good set up to the story I was, to say the least, very disappointed that this was all going to be about Omega... again. I could really have done without encountering him again, for sure. But, yeah, the episode was mostly a pretty good and intriguing one with a nice series of scenes where various characters are either just playing along or trying to break free of what they suspect is the real version of reality. It does, however, seem to be a bit of a stretch to find The Rani is just trying to locate Omega and that she’s using the supposedly all powerful pantheon of Gods to get him. Presumably to work with him for an even bigger project, one scientist to another (or two to another in this case, I suspect). It's possible Mrs. Flood may bring her down herself though, I reckon.

Hmm... as I write these words I’m actually beginning to talk myself out of whether I thought it was a good episode now, to be honest but... no, I was mostly entertained and I especially liked The Doctor and Belinda waking up in bed together (more of that please). And, hooray, the Doctor didn’t cry again for, I think, the second week running... which must be some kind of Gatwa era record, to be fair.

And there you go... a short review once again (as I said going into the reviews for this last series) but, other than to briefly make mention that The Rani has a much better and more traditional sonic screwdriver than the current incarnation of The Doctor, that’s really all I have to say about Wish World. I suspect next week’s season finale might well be the very last episode ever or, if we’re slightly luckier, just a long resting point for the show (until a company with larger purse strings wants to team up with the BBC when, I suspect, Disney will soon drop out of the equation... leaving behind some nasty worldwide rights issues, no doubt). I reckon Susan Foreman’s history might well be rewritten... or rather, retrofitted and expanded... at some point next week. We shall see what we shall see... again.

Black Eyed Susan

Hell, Oh Dolly!

Black Eyed Susan
Directed by Scooter McCrae
USA 2024
Vinegar Syndrome

I’ve been wanting to watch a Scooter McCrae film for a while now. Not because I know his work (I don’t) but because I’ve heard him guest on a couple of podcasts over a few years and he seems to be someone who has a reasonable outlook on life and maybe is happy to push boundaries. I wanted to see Black Eyed Susan at the cinema so I waited for it to come out over here in the UK and... well, it just didn’t. Having now watched it, I’m guessing the complex and dark material coupled with the fact there’s not much you can really justify cutting from it... maybe might have been a bit much for the UK censors. Or, maybe the company just didn’t bother sending it to our damned BBFC because they know their track record.

Anyway, the film is, in some ways, following a trend of movies being made about sex dolls just recently. There was the Argentinian film Maria from a few years ago (which I saw at FrightFest that year but, still doesn’t seem to have been given any kind of UK release), there’s Psycho Sex Dolls (which I’m hoping will finally turn up as my kickstarter reward before this review sees the light of day*), there’s Companion (reviewed here) and, yeah, I’m sure there are a few I’ve forgotten too. Not to mention a few other not so recent films looking at AI sex dolls through an enquiring lens.

This one is pretty unique though, I’m guessing. It doesn’t do the kiss kiss bang bang in the way you might expect. This is a pretty talkie picture but it never gets boring. Gilbert (played brilliantly by Marc Romeo) has invented a super realistic sex android called Black Eyed Susan (played skillfully by Yvonne Emilie Thälker). She is basically intended for customers to be able to beat up and vent their aggression on, in addition to the expected sexual services. So she has under skin bruising technology and bleeding etc... and has several modes she can switch between, such as encouraging or provoking abuse and punishment etc.

In the cold open we see a test subject (played by Scott Fowler) venting with the doll (which, more or less apart from some cosmetic tweaks, looks and acts like a real person) but, three months later he is somehow dead from what appears to be a suicide. However, a friend of his, Derek (played by Damian Maffei) is down on his luck and barely surviving so, he gets given the job of the next punchy sex doll tester... eventually getting into a similar situation as his former friend. And you may think that’s a straight road map to something much more conventional but, I’m telling you, what you are already thinking about the AI learning Susan and her involvement in the death of the former tester... well, you’re probably not in the right ball park (I’m happy to say since, you know, it's cliché done to death).

This film is quite dark because it explores the nature of humans and specifically the future customers who will be drawn to this product. And when Derek stops thinking of it as a product and begins to develop an emotional attachment while dealing with his own shifting darkness inside him... about that ‘one incident’ in the past when he was drunk... then things get really interesting. You might, for a while, wonder who is really being tested here... Black Eyed Susan or Derek.

There’s also another bold element in the film which I’m sure will also be something which will deter the censors of various countries from giving it any kind of certification. I’m going to try and talk around it because I don’t want to give away any spoilers but, there’s an incident where a young boy approaches Gilbert and Derek in a park when they’re talking over the specifics of the latter’s new job. It seemed a little out of place and perhaps, slightly sinister. Well, this moment does have an unexpected pay off later on in the film and the motivations Gilbert gives for doing what he does as a job is, like most of the issues in this movie (which is somehow both a little tamer than I expected but also not for the faint-hearted), not a black and white issue. It’s absolutely charcoal grey and this revelation in the last quarter of the film is definitely a sensitive issue which is going to push a lot of people’s buttons, I suspect.

So, okay, the film is low budget and you can kinda see the limitations on screen to an extent but, that being said, the production values do hold up because the director/writer/producer... aka Scooter McCrae... has written very nicely to the budget, it seems to me and has managed to solve any problems the film might run into in a creative way. And it doesn’t deter from the suspense of some sequences either. All I’m saying is... the razor blade scene might have some people squirming for the potential of what could go wrong.

And if you’re on the fence about this one and don’t know if it’s right for you, let me just say that the director has a special Thank You card on the end titles referencing Radley Metzger, Walerian Borowczyk, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Lina Romay and Roger Corman. So, yeah, if you like all those people, now sadly deceased, as much as you should... you might want to turn on to this one.

So that’s me done with Black Eyed Susan and, it’s a rare ‘adult themed’ film in terms of the discussions and ideas explored. It was a really interesting, thought provoking time I had with it and it’s a shame I don’t know anyone else who’s seen it because there are interesting conversations to be had. Probably approach with caution if you want to be in a comfortable head space but, for all you movie warriors out there, maybe jump right in and see if you can swim.

*Okay. Yup, it’s arrived now.

Demons 2

Shock Block

Demons 2
aka Dèmoni 2... l'incubo ritorna
Italy 1986
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Okay... this really is going to be a short review. When I revisited the first Demons on Blu Ray recently (reviewed here), as part of Arrow’s excellent double bill collection of the films, I was somewhat disappointed with it not living up to my memories of a better film. However, since I was very much let down by the sequel when I first saw it (20 or more years ago), I figured that my tastes may have changed and I’d maybe get more out of Demons 2 on a second look. Alas, I can confirm that Demons 2 is... well... it does still make the first film look pretty good. It’s a lousy sequel with not a whole lot going for it, it has to be said.

One of the nicer things about it is the concept. In the first movie we had the people in the first film in a cinema watching a horror story which suddenly became a parallel for the customers suddenly getting infected by a demon virus themselves. In this movie, it’s almost completely set within an apartment block, late one evening when most of the people living there are tuned into a similar horror movie on their TV. This one has a demon from the movie pushing itself out of the TV screen of one of the characters and infecting her, unleashing the demon virus into the tower block. And that’s that... another simple story of survival horror (or non-survival, as the case may be) and there’s not a heck of a lot of fun to be found in the various twists and turns.

There are a few nice things and points of interest I can briefly mention here though.

For example, the resurrection of the demon from a corpse in the movie within the movie is a simple effect but executed brilliantly so it looks great. There’s another nice special effect moments later where a dog is transformed into a demon and that’s not handled badly at all (perhaps inspired by the John Carpenter remake of The Thing, reviewed here, although obviously not in the same league). And talking about... ‘inspired by’... there’s a sequence where a demonic kid is running around chasing a pregnant woman but then he starts writhing around himself in a kind of parody of John Hurt’s character from A L I E N. Yep, there’s a chest burster parody here as the demon boy gives birth to... something not entirely unlike the title creatures of the movie Gremlins, to be honest. So two references for the price of one there. Plus, a nice moment when the bloody knife seen at the start of the movie turns out to be dripping with jam in a patisserie shop. A nice but minor piece of visual rug pulling.

There’s a lot of bad things in the movie too. There are a few actors back from the first one in different roles but, it has to be said that, in general the acting in this movie is not a high point. It’s also the film debut of a very young Asia Argento (she was around 11 years old when this film was released in cinemas) but she’s kind of wasted in this and doesn’t seem to do much at all... bizarrely dropping out of the fillm towards the end with no real clue for the audience as to her fate... as she hides in a car in the underground car park where a lot of the short lived survivors fight their last stand.

Added to this, there are a few moments at various intervals in the movie where it takes the parts that were practically unwatchable in the last film, a bunch of teens driving around the city very fast playing rock music... and repeats it with another bunch of unlikable teens who, this time around, don’t go anywhere close to catching up with the rest of the plot. In fact, there are quite a few scenes in this movie where it feels like other sequences were planned but then never shot. And goodness knows why two of the main exterior shots are completely out of focus. Why were they even left in the film? The budget obviously didn’t cover reshoots I guess.

Other than that, the only really good thing about the movie is the music. And I don’t mean the bunch of ‘hard to listen to’ pop songs which clutter up the soundtrack, especially when the teens are driving around the city. I’m talking about young, up and coming composer Simon Boswell’s score, which supports this mess of a movie when it can but, I can tell you that the CD soundtrack of his Demons 2 score is much more interesting as a stand alone listen. It’s a mostly different kind of vibe to Claudio Simonetti’s driven score to the first film. It does share some similar ‘orchestration’ of the electronics at certain points but it definitely sounds like Boswell’s distinctive musical signature on the score, for sure.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say on this one. Demons 2 is not a movie I would recommend to anyone. If you want to see a decent, virally violent group of people slicing and dicing their way through an apartment block then David Croneneberg’s Shivers (reviewed here) would be the film to watch. That one was made 11 years before Demons 2 but is a far superior movie and much more potent than this mess of a sequel, for sure. I know some people love this film but... yeah... this one is just not for me.

Doctor Who - The Interstellar Song Contest

Flood Damage

Doctor Who -
The Interstellar Song Contest
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 17th May 2025

Warning: All the big, big spoilers

Hmm... dunno. As I mentioned at the end of last weeks review, the trailer made this episode look pretty unwatchable but, I’m glad to say it wasn’t and a couple of my friends thought this one was really good. As I am writing this I’m still processing some of the big story strokes this one had but, on the whole I thought that it was... an okay episode.

Okay, lets get to it... the last stopping point of The Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) collecting readings from the Vindicator to get Belinda (played by Varada Sethu) home to Earth, sees them landing on a space station broadcasting a future installment of... The Interstellar Song Contest which is what the Eurovision Song Contest apparently evolved into over time, after the destruction of the Earth which, apparently, coincided with the day The Doctor and Belinda left it.  One of my least favourite TV presenters, Rylan Clarke, is released from suspended animation to compère the show and the station even has an interactive holographic version of another of my least favourite television presenters, Graham Norton.

And, of course, Mrs. Flood is also in the audience. I’ll get to her soon enough because, she comes back big time in a mid credits teaser which reveals her true identity. So stick with it.

This one appears to kill off the whole audience, including The Doctor, within the first ten minutes but Belinda and a few others are spared due to their situation and, its not long before The Doctor returns, improbably riding a confetti canon from out in deep space protected by a gravity field, which due to the whole Isaac Newton thing from the opening scene of Wild Blue Yonder (reviewed here), everyone is still referring to as mavity. 

However, the reason The Doctor revives is because of a vision he has in his head while frozen out in the void. That vision being of his grand-daughter Susan Foreman, played once again by the actress who played her in 1963, Carole Ann Ford. Now, this is kind of interesting because,The Doctor originally left Susan on Earth in the year 2164, in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed here), which was also made into a movie set in a different year (reviewed here). So where and when these visions are set is... interesting. As is the fact that Susan hasn’t regenerated at all in the last 61 years.

Anyway, as usual it’s another short review for this series with, some nice sequences but with a lot of camp in it (well, it is a Eurovision themed episode so I’m trying to forgive it that) and some nice musical cues from Murray Gold (none of which are of much consequence since his stuff doesn’t seem to be getting any proper CD releases anymore). So let’s get to that mid-end credits scene then...

Mrs. Flood is a timelord, no surprises there. And her identity is not a particular surprise either since... well people have been guessing it right since her introduction a couple of years ago. But what I didn’t expect was that Anita Dobson, who plays the character, would bi-generate just as The Doctor did during his last regeneration. And she bi-generated into... dum dum dum... The Rani. Originally played by the late, great Kate O’Mara opposite the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), she is now played by both a bizarrely subservient Anita Dobson and newcomer Archie Panjabi. 

Oh... and note to the writers. If you’re going to have somebody new bringing back an iconic character, then maybe don’t have her quoting a Fourth Doctor speech which has echoed through the series as an indication that she’s the ‘definite article’. I’m already not liking the way she plays her. I remember seeing Kate O’Mara playing The Rani on stage in a musical Doctor Who show at Wimbledon, opposite Jon Pertwee returning as the Third Doctor many years later and, all I will say is... Kate O’Mara is to The Rani what Roger Delgado was to The Master. But we shall soon see, I guess.

Two more episodes to go now before, I suspect, Doctor Who will take a long rest or, quite possibly, be cancelled and slowly forgotten. I hope neither of those things happen but, yeah, I reckon it’s on the cards for sure. What with every episode in this season so far garnering the lowest ratings in the 63 year history of the show. Again... we shall soon see.

Righting Wrongs

Wrong At Heart

Righting Wrongs
aka Zhi fa xian feng
aka Above The Law
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Corey Yuen  
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Very spoilery spoilers.

Wow. Righting Wrongs is another great, early martial arts classic starring Cynthia Rothrock and, I think it’s one of my favourite ones. But first, I had to decide which version to watch. Which frustrated me no end. I mean, power to 88 Films and all but this is a two disc edition with no less than four different cuts (well, more than that... wait for it). The original Hong Kong Theatrical Cut, the English Above The Law Cut, the Singapore Cut and, an Ultimate Cut combining footage from all three versions. So I initially thought I’d watch the Ultimate Cut but, it turns out that before you play the movie, you have to choose which one of four endings you want the film to end with? I mean... really? I have no idea... to quote an old 1980s Lenny Henry joke where he was talking about buying 12” remix singles... “Just give me the one where they got it right!”

So in the end I decided ‘screw this’, I’m going back to the first disc with the Hong Kong version on it, which turned out to be the exact right choice because the ending on this thing is... well, I’ll get to it. But even there I was getting very frustrated because, before the disc would let me play the film, I then had to choose one of four different language and sound mixes for the movie. I went with Hong Kong because I don’t want to see people dubbed into inappropriate English voices and, yeah, similarly, this was the right choice to make.

The film starts with Biao Yuen as chief prosecutor Hsia Ling-Cheng, failing to prevent a judge from getting machine gunned to death. Then, a whole family of witnesses (including several young children) and the police protecting them, are brutally murdered and then blown up. So the case to jail a couple of crime bosses Ling-Chen had been trying to put behind bars... falls apart. Egged on by his magistrate friend (played by Roy Chiao... Lao Che of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom), he takes matters into his own hands, infiltrates one of the two bosses’ safe apartments and then kills him. Kills him to death!!!!!

Enter Inspector Cindy Si, played by Cynthia Rothrock and her new, comedy relief partner (played by the film’s director). She gets a clue that it might have been the prosecutor who killed the guy so, after some verbal sparring with him, she follows him and when she turns up, the other boss is dead (as are all his gang) and she has her man at the scene of the crime. Unknown to her, Ling-Chen didn’t kill this lot. The magistrate gives him an alibi (even though she believes he killed them all) but she’s still following him around trying to prove his guilt.

Unknown to them both at this time, it was actually the chief of police played by Melvin Wong... who is trying to take over the gangs himself... who killed all this lot. And he wants to pin everything on Ling-Chen to cover up and also kill him... and anyone who knows... in the process. Unknown to everyone, a street smart teenage kid witnessed the crimes and, after underestimating the chief of police (who he tries to blackmail) he finds himself thrown in with both the prosecutor and Cindy (who, eventually, works out what’s going on).

And this is a great, if convoluted film. It’s only got a dab of the broad comedy stylings which are the weak spot (in my opinion) of some of these films and, well, it’s not just the spectacular fight and chase stunt scenes where the film pulls no punches. It’s ultimately a very bleak film and here’s why...

Every time you get attached to a regular character, something bad happens to them. So the lovable comic relief guy gets killed by his boss, the police chief, along with his innocent grandad. What the heck? And then, as if this isn’t bad enough, when the kid finally ‘comes in’ and decides to work with our two main protagonists, he gets taken out with a throat stabbing too. And it all prompts spectacular fight after spectacular fight. There’s some great stuff going on here and as much as I admire Biao Yuen’s obvious skills... I have to say that Rothrock is absolutely amazing in this one. There’s a fight scene between the two of them and, in one of the extras on the disc, she states that he was her favourite opponent on screen because their timing and rhythms in the fight scenes were so well matched. So they could do all this stuff a little easier than when they were fighting other people.

And as spectacular as this movie is... it just keeps getting bleaker. So twenty minutes or so before the end of the film is where I suspect the other, alternate, ‘happier’ endings must have cut in. But in his version... it’s just bleak and somehow perfect... and certainly surprising. So Cynthia Rothrock goes to an airplane hanger to have a big, fight showdown with her boss and his killers. She takes out all of the henchmen in a spectacular fight and then it’s just her and the chief of police, who also has good martial arts skills (as does practically every character in a Hong Kong movie, it would seem). After trading blows and so fourth he has her impaled to a wall with a giant corkscrew screwdriver thingy going through the top of her torso. Then he does the usual villain monologueing and I thought, that’s it. Let this be your last monologue because Cindy is going to turn the tables now. Except... she doesn’t. He pulls out the corkscrew in a welter of blood and then re-impales her through the throat, killing her and leaving her hanging limply on the wall. Wait... what? I did not see that coming at all. That’s a heck of a way to take me by surprise at this late stage in the proceedings.

Fear not though... prosecutor Ling-Chen turns up to save the day and face off against the big boss. They get into a fight and the villain fleas in a plane but not before our surviving hero manages to grab on and get on board. He kills the boss (who crashes the plane) and dives out to land in the ocean... and here’s where the next shocker occurs. Instead of swimming away from things as he would in a Hollywood movie... he’s now just a floating corpse because, as in real life, his body was falling far too fast to be able to survive the fall, water or not. So, we’re at the end of the picture... and pretty much every major character is now dead. Roll credits. Which is quite amazing because there’s also no way anyone can be left to clear the prosecutor’s name either (although, to be fair, he did also kill one of the crime bosses).

And that’s me done for Righting Wrongs, I think. Blows are traded, stunts are stunted, lives were lost and... it’s a pretty great movie, it has to be said. I certainly wasn’t expecting there to be no survivors left to tell the story at the end of the day, so to speak. Rothrock has gone on to say this was her favourite of the Hong Kong films she did and I can see why. Her fight scenes in this one are pretty great, even if there are a couple of moments where they decided that even she couldn’t do things like jump down a level in a supermarket, which is when you can see her stunt double is a guy. But that’s okay... you can see she did 99% of her own stuff in this, which is more than you would be allowed in a Hollywood production for sure. At the end of the day, I’m not sure many wrongs in this were actually righted but, hey, it looks pretty great and even the soundtrack isn’t that distracting so, I’d have to say I’m having a good time catching up with Rothrock’s ouevre so far.

Godzilla VS Biollante

Biollante Night

Godzilla VS Biollante
aka Gojira vs. Biorante
Directed by Kazuki Ômori,
Kôji Hashimoto & Kenjirô Ohmori
Japan 1989
Toho/Criterion Collection
Blu Ray Zone B

I’d not seen Godzilla VS Biollante before this new Criterion Collection Blu Ray version of the film but, while I am certainly most grateful to finally get to see it, I do have a couple of criticisms of Criterion’s handling of it... which I’ll get back to later.

While this is mostly known as being the second entry in the Heisei wave of Godzilla films, after 1984’s The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985), it’s technically actually the first, since the 1984 reboot was released during the Showa era. But it really doesn’t matter and lumping it all in gives a clearer delineation of how this second wave of films all fit together.

After some eerie music while the typography on screen tells us about the four official government warning signs of The Big G (which read in a similar vein to the three rules which make up UFO close encounters) accompanied by some more eerie music playing in the background, we are then treated to some credits which have what is presumably the denouement of the previous film playing out, as Godzilla is trapped in a volcano. After this, a scientist’s daughter is killed while he is experimenting with genetic cells taken from the monster.

Cut to five years later and his invention of an anti-nuclear weapon bacteria using said cells is at the violent centre of a conflict for control of the material, between the Japanese government, the clueless Americans and the evil people from the fictional land of Saradia (which I think is meant to be a pointed reference to Saudi Arabia). There’s a lot of convoluted plot and action here, leading to the reawakening of Godzilla from his volcano slumber but, while this is all going on, the scientist accidentally creates a new, giant plant monster called Biollante, by mixing the cells of Godzilla with those of a rose and his late daughter. All the expected shenanigans ensue as gigantic monster battles are fought.

And, it’s not the best of the Godzilla films (contrary to what a 2014 poll of the Japanese people said) but, after a very slow lead in, it’s not a bad one either. Although I would have to say that the giant monster battles between Godzilla, Biollante and a Thunderbirds-like submersible air craft called Super X2, which looks like just what International Rescue might have sent, are actually pretty dull. Lots of water splashing, reflected heat breaths, tentacle grabbing and tail wagging theatrics. But it’s just not on a par with some of the sillier (and therefore cooler) Godzilla films of the Showa era. Although, there is the welcome return of the maser cannons from those earlier films.

There are also some nice shot compositions including a cool moment where some big, building windows going back to one point perspective in the foreground of a shot are used to house the establishing moment of people arriving at the building. There are, however, also some not so great things about the movie.

For example, the score by Kôichi Sugiyama seems somewhat out of place in a Godzilla film. Sounding more like the kind of score Ron Goodwin might have written for a British war movie, for the most part. Great as a stand alone listen but, yeah, it really doesn’t help the movie any, for a lot of the time. Toe tapping but a bad support for the visual image. Which would explain why there’s also a lot of tracked in music from Akira Ifukube’s brilliant Godzilla scores included too, a fair bit of the time. And in comparison to the new stuff, this reappropriated stuff sounds magnificent. There’s a great moment in the tale where, after a fairly dull opening, I really started investing in the film and a good deal of that was due to the re-use of Ifukube. There’s a scene where two of the principal leads go and see a classroom of children who all have extra sensory perception (that’s ESP to you and me folks) at the Japanese Psyonics Centre (don’t ask) and they are busy drawing what they have all individually dreamed of the night before. In a wonderful moment foreshadowing the reawakening of Godzillla, when they are asked what they have drawn, the kids all hold up very differently styled illustrations of The Big G and, as they do so, Ifukube’s wonderful Godzilla march swells up in, to overpower the mix and, as it did, the film finally had its hooks in me.

I’ve got two more complaints to level at Criterion. Various people speak English a lot in the early parts of the film but, they are clearly not speaking their first language because, honestly, the accents and mutilation of the language is so bad I could only understand about every eighth word. Which is unfortunate because, in these sequences, the subtitles are in Japanese rather than English like the rest of the movie. So, yeah, I had no idea what was going on for a lot of the time during those scenes. I would have thought Criterion would have been all over that.

And the other thing, which is problematic to me as a fan, is the existence of an individual release of the film from Criterion in the first place. Sometime during the pandemic (or was it just before?), Criterion put out a beautiful book/box set of the entire run of Showa era Godzillla films and very welcome it was too. We have all been patiently waiting for them to release the other two big waves of Godzilla films in similar presentations. Why, then, are we getting this little individual release? The fan base is obviously there and chomping at the bit for a proper release of this stuff so... this really is annoying you guys! It almost feels like a drug dealer giving his customers a taste of the product before waiting to get them hooked properly later on. These other two Godzilla waves need to happening soon... is that not obvious to the marketing people at the label?

Anyway, that’s me done on the new Criterion release of Godzilla VS Biollante. If you are a fan of these kinds of movies then you will probably enjoy this one. If not then, well, probably stay away is my best guess.

Doctor Who - The Story And The Engine

 

ScheWhoRazade

Doctor Who -
The Story And The Engine
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 10th May 2025

Warning: Story and cameo spoilers.

Yeah, go on then. Some films or TV shows have absolutely terrible trailers which practically warn you away from the idea of watching them but, if you do end up seeing the final product, they actually turn out pretty great... the Terry Gilliam movie The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen would be a typical example for me (and, of course, the opposite effect can, more often be true). And this latest episode of Doctor Who, The Story And The Engine, is a good example of just this phenomenon. I watched the preview trailer last week and my heart sank. It looked absolutely dire and I finally gave up on the thing. But, since I’m guessing that this will be the show’s final season before cancellation (I sincerely hope not but the ratings are the lowest the show has ever had in its 62 year history), I soldiered on and just wanted to get through this experience as quickly as possible because... well, I’ll miss it when it’s gone.

So I’m thankful that this particular episode was actually a nice change of pace and a breath of fresh air for the continuing adventures of The Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa and Belinda, played by Varada Sethu. And it’s all set in a barber shop in Lagos. Well, not just in Lagos.... because once you enter through the door and become one of the customers in the small shop where 99% of the show takes place, you are held there indefinitely because the shop is also part of a giant mechanical spider travelling through space and powered by the stories that the customers tell, to keep it going on its journey and keep themselves alive (so, yeah, a spin on the story of Scheherazade for sure).

An it’s a talkie one which doesn’t rely at all on any action (although the special effects team powered by the Disney money certainly couldn’t resist an explosive conclusion to the tale) and instead it’s all about why the new owner of the shop is involved in all this in the first place and how he is, with the help of the daughter of a God, on a special agenda of his own making. And, okay, maybe it dragged just a little towards the end and couldn’t, perhaps, bring in a denouement quite worthy of the prolonged build up but... I have to say I was mostly intrigued by it and also pleasantly surprised that the appearance of Mrs. Flood this week (played by Anita Dobson) seemed almost coincidental to the story and less sinister (saying that, I don’t think the idea of delving into stories, is quite done with for this year’s series).

And, when the various tales were being told, we got a nice mixture of live action coupled with unfolding animations which were rendering the words of the story as each person spoke. This was nicely done and added rich texture to the episode, for sure.

Now there were some slight down beats, since the main character once again lived up for my new name for this incarnation, The Crying Doctor. But, there was also a nice surprise in the brief cameo return of Jo Martin as the incarnation known as The Fugitive Doctor. I’m thinking we may not be quite done with her yet... or at least that might have been the long term plan. It’s nice to see her in a story outside of the Jodie Whitaker era of the show and perhaps we will see her at the end of this season. It was also nice to hear and see clips from the lives of past incarnations of the Doctors once again... good stuff.

But that’s me done with The Story And The Engine and I thought that was one of the best, if not the best, of this new series by far. And once again I’m in the position where the trailer for next weeks show, which takes place in and around a kind of Intergalactic version of the Eurovision Song Contest, looks absolutely dire and unwatchable. So who knows, perhaps it will be a good one after all.

Demons

Screening Doom

Demons
aka Dèmoni
Italy 1985
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Mild spoilers I guess... but it’s not that kind of film.

It’s been a while since I first saw Demons, which was one of the first Italian horror movies I saw when I was catching up on Dario Argento’s gialli (and his very occasional foray into horror with films like Suspiria, reviewed here and Inferno, reviewed here). I remember I purchased this when all the international barriers were dropped at the dawn of the ‘DVD age’, and acquiring it bundled together with the sequel along with two other Argento double features on the US Region Anchor Bay releases. Not that this film is directed by Argento but, he did produce it in a very ‘hands on’ fashion (from what I’ve been able to find out) and also co-wrote the final screenplay version. The film was partially shot in Berlin but it’s interesting that, in Germany the films were released back to front... so Demons 2 was released as Demons and it was followed by this first movie, released over there as Demons 2. Which is strange but I remember loving this one a couple of decades ago and thought I’d revisit it on the latest of Arrow’s double bill Blu Ray releases of the movie, which has even more extras on it than their previous release.

The film is actually directed by Lamberto Bava, whose father was the great Mario Bava and, while you may say that the bright, coloured stylistic lightning could be seen as an Argento signature on the production, it’s more than likely inherited from the very strong lighting schemes used by Lamberto’s father, who Argento was also heavily influenced by.

The film starts off with Claudio Simonetti’s addictive Demons theme, which also incorporates elements of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and D Minor (if I’m not mistaken) and Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King as part of the driven synthesiser melody, playing on the soundtrack as one of the lead characters, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey), is given a couple of free cinema preview tickets after a train ride, before meeting up with her friend Cathy (Paola Cozzo). There’s a nice replica of said ‘golden ticket’ in the latest Arrow box. Incidentally, the guy in the mask who gives her the ticket is played by future director Michelle Soavi and, there are actually three masks in this film which help drive the plot. One on his face, the one in the Metropol cinema where Cheryl, Cathy and a load of other customers converge to see the new horror film preview (and which, importantly, one of the customers cuts her cheek on) and the one in the ‘movie within a movie), where one of the characters on screen also cuts their face on a mask and subsequently turns into a demon. Something which also happens to the audience member who cut her cheek, as she’s examining the cut in the bathroom. Then, we find that the scratches and bites of the demon infects other people and turns them into demons (much like the bite of a zombie in a zombie movie, which the demons in this film are just another iteration of really, except they obviously move a heck of a lot faster).

When the second victim, trying to tend to the scratches on her neck from her friend, stumbles behind the screen, a sequence is playing in the movie where a demon is trying to cut through a white sheet and, of course, victim number two promptly rips and stumbles through from the other side of the screen at the precise moment the on screen demon tears through. Panic soon ensues as the surviving customers, who aren’t able to get out of the cinema which has bizarrely walled itself up (at least, that’s the way it appears from the inside) attempt to fight off the demons and then attempt to escape the auditorium somehow. It’s a simple enough plot and the film did huge business when it was released, prompting one true sequel and a fair few others which were retitled as Demons sequels in various territories (and which were not actually connected to the Demons films in any way... although I heard very recently that the original director is currently working on some kind of reboot of this one).

And there’s lots of things worth noting about the film. Such as a whole host of posters in the cinema lobby, for films like the Giorgio Moroder recut of Metropolis (if I’m remembering it right, the timing would be around then for that version of the film), the Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu and even one of Dario Argento’s classics, Four Flies On Grey Velvet (which I reviewed here). Also in this and a fair few other scenes, we have the smartly dressed cinema usher played by none other than Nicoletta Elmi, who played the nasty little girl in Argento’s Deep Red (reviewed here) as well as child appearances in other famous gialli like A Bay Of Blood and Who Saw Her Die? The film also features one of Argento’s daughters, Fiore, in a small role (his other very young daughter, Asia, would have a lead child role in the sequel).

Another nice little joke is that there is a gang of thugs driving around outside in the city and one of them is sniffing cocaine through a straw from a Coca Cola can. So it’s definitely ‘the real thing’ but I can’t imagine Coca Cola being that happy with that particular piece of product placement.

Demons is a nice enough, entertaining film and it has some cool photography plus a certain ‘teen horror’ vibe to it. However, now I look back at it, I can’t help but feel that the photography is harmed quite a lot by the rapidity of the editing. It feels really choppy and some of the cuts back and forth are quite jarring now, it seems to me. Also, this time around, I was noticing a lot of the long shots and closer takes just weren’t matching all that well.

The choppiness isn’t helped much by the gang of thugs riding around the city who do finally make their way in to the cinema but, well, they needn’t have bothered, it seems to me. Their only real purpose in the narrrative seems to be to drive around in the car so we can cut back to them with a different pop song by the likes of Billy Idol or Motley Crue playing on the soundtrack, so the record company can make a killing on the tie in album. But the songs sound atrocious most of the time and don’t help the film. I’ve had at least two versions of the soundtrack over the years but none of the ones I own have ever featured the songs... just Claudio Simonetti’s brilliant score.

Bits of the film work but bits really don’t, such as Urbano Barberini ridiculously riding a motorbike over the cinema seat backs and somehow still staying upright (they must have built a hidden ramp to do this... which is a cheat as far as I’m concerned because there’s no way, surely, you could do this in real life) and the bizarre non-sequiter of a helicopter crashing through the roof of the cinema and providing a convenient escape route for the two surviving (up to that point) characters.

So, yeah, mixed feeling on this one. Demons is not quite the film I remember but it does have a certain something in that the gore effects are all practical effects and the photography is great. I’d still recommend it to certain ‘horror friends’ but I had less of a good time with it now than I did 20 odd years ago. It will be interesting visiting the sequel soon as I remember being very disappointed in that one from the outset... what’s the betting that I like it more than the first one now? I shall soon see, I guess.

Thunderbolts*

The Mild Bunch

Thunderbolts*
Directed by Jake Schreier
USA 2025
Marvel Disney
UK Cinema Release Print - IMAX version

Warning: Yeah, there’s some spoilerage here... big one at the end.

Thunderbolts* is the final part of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic universe and it’s almost but, not quite, a good film too. This one involves straggling characters from previous films and TV shows coming together to form a ‘rag tag’ group of C-list Marvels going up against a larger power and, ultimately, winning the day... in a fashion.

So we have the brilliant Florence Pugh being interesting as ex-Black Widow Yelena (sister of Natasha), David Harbour returning as her father, the hilarious Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan back as main staple character Bucky Barnes (still a million miles away from the Bucky I know from the comics but a pretty good character and actor, nonetheless), Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt) as failed Captain America substitute gone rogue American Agent, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster (also from Black Widow, reviewed here and Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr (from Ant-Man And The Wasp, reviewed here). All working for and against (it gets blurry) the MCU TV and movie character Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

And I’m telling you now, don’t get too attached to these characters until half an hour has passed because the one I was most interested in seeing developed as a character gets killed very early in the film (I won’t reveal who here, though)*. We also have, spoiler alert, Lewis Pullman playing Bob (aka The Sentry and The Void)... I’ve not read any of the comics of this character so can’t tell you if he’s a good version of him or not.

What I can tell you is that I was really engaged with this movie and having a good time for the first three quarters... which involved setting up the characters, trapping them all in an armoured bunker and following them as they escape and make their way back to New York for a final reckoning. Alas, the last quarter of the movie seemed pretty dire to me and really took the wind out of my sails. As soon as they’re back in New York, things got both ridiculous and dull. For me anyway.

So, I didn’t quite like this as much as the last Marvel movie, Captain America - Brave New World (reviewed here) but I do like the characters better. Although, it has to be said, the dialogue writing on this  was not a patch on any of their previous appearances.

There are a couple of problems with it.

For instance, the film starts out with Florence Pugh jumping off the second tallest building in the world and she fought to do this sequence for real herself (pulling a page from Tom Cruise’s book) and, yeah, she really does it. The down side is that I’m telling you this because, if you didn’t know this, you wouldn’t have been able to tell. It looks like a stunt double doing it due to the way it’s cut and lack of close ups on her face. If you’re going to throw your lead actress off such a tall building for a movie, then you might as well shoot it to make it recognisable as such, no?

Another thing is that, while it has a nice gritty aesthetic for the majority of the movie, there’s a certain point... a big battle scene where we first meet The Sentry in his ridiculous costume... where the aesthetic is just clashing with the action on screen. The result was... and to be fair I would have thought of this no matter how the rest of the movie was filmed... I sat there in the cinema thinking, for a good few minutes, that I was watching Superman IV - The Quest For Peace. Honestly, The Sentry to me just looked like Nuclear Man from that unfortunate movie. It popped me right out of the film and I had a hard time climbing back into it. It also didn’t help that the resolution of the film reminded me of Ang Lee’s muddled ending of Hulk. It’s all about fighting your inner demons folks, right? A more philosophically based internal battle was not the conclusion this movie needed. At least, I didn’t think it worked that well.

Now, one of the things the trailers and even the IMAX countdown opening were pushing was the next movie in the MCU (which comes out in a couple of months)... and there are two post credits scenes in this one. All I’m saying is, if you want to be surprised by the second one then, seriously, don’t look at the music credits on this movie (it’s a complete spoiler). What it also does, in my opinion, is take the wind out of the sails of the reveal of the time period of the next movie by throwing out the term ‘interdimensional’. I mean, I expected the next movie would be a multiverse movie anyway (and the trailers look terrible) but this is pretty much confirmed here.

Finally, you’ll notice that the title of Thunderbolts* has an asterisk on it. Now I’m sure there must have been some people wondering what this means but, I’m sure there must have been as many people thinking... “no, please don’t do the obvious here because this would be such bad news for the franchise". But, yes, they totally go there with the whole asterisk thing and, well, it kind of takes away hope for decent screen time for certain returning characters in future installments, in a way. All I’m saying is... I'm guessing Purdey and Gambit will not be turning up in the future of the franchise (and if you’re British you’ll probably know exactly what I’m saying here).

And that concludes my review of Thunderbolts*. Starts off good, continues that way for a while... has a terrible last act. But it was nice seeing Yelena and Red Guardian again... although there seems to be no explanation for the absence of Rachel Weisz here (did I miss something in a TV show?).

*Although it’s not stopped the marketing team from adding that character into a scene that doesn’t include said person for some of the publicity shots... see above.