Reviews

If this movie just contained action scenes featuring the amazing Moon Lee, I would have been rated it higher. Early in the film, Moon infiltrates an organisation of terrorist assassins, taking the place of one of their number after a fight on a train and follows this with a couple energetic brawls against armies of men. Inexplicably the directors opted to hand large sections of the movie over to male leads (despite the title) and Moon more or less disappears from the film. The army of bad guys who a sensible director would have had annihilated by the feet and fists of Moon instead meet their doom at the hands of a pair of guys in ridiculous machine gun equipped jet packs. The other plus of this movie is the main villain, played by American Katy Hickman in her only Hong Kong role (she is not Saskia Van Rijswijk as some have claimed). Surely the climatic fight should have been between her and Moon, but I'm sure there must be a story behind Moon Lee's limited screen time on this feature.

The genius who thought casting the distinctly Caucasian Kristin Kreuk as the Asian heroine Chun-Li should be banished from the movie business forever. In the 1970's, the producers of the TV series 'Kung Fu' cast David Carradine instead of Bruce Lee as they feared America was not ready for an Asian male lead, but that was a long time ago. The producers of Chun-Li who claimed that Kreuk was cast due to her 'acting' ability must be feeling pretty embarrassed now after her flat performance in a movie which misses the mark in more ways than one. Anyway, who needs 'acting talent' in a movie like this anyway, as if Rothrock, Van Damme & Norris were great thespians!

It bears no resemblance to the colourful & garish world of the Street Fighter games and considering the frenetic energy which is the trademark of the Capcom series the action when it finally comes is a major let-down. Too much time is spent developing the rather dull story line instead of having Chun-Li beating people up.

Kreuk's acting is uninspiring, but it was her physical condition which appalled me most - she looks so thin and frail resembling a near anorexic teen instead of the muscular thunder thighed Chun-Li of the games. I'd love to see some movie producer have the courage to cast a woman with a muscular build in movies like this instead of always serving up female stick figures flying through the air on wires.

The original Van-Damme 'Street Fighter' was poor, but like the movies of Uwe Boll it did have a little style and camp energy which 'The Legend of Chun-Li' totally lacks. Its a movie which has been remembered for all the wrong reasons, but I doubt anyone will be talking about 'The Legend of Chun-Li' .

The biggest failing of this movie is how it fails to really convey the desperate situation America was in during the depression. The economic state of the nation was one of the main reasons Dillinger turned to crime and also why he was admired by many as a modern day Jesse James who stole only from the hated banks. Of course this view is romantic and erroneous considering the deaths he was responsible for but to many Americans, he was a hero. Michael Mann fails to show how big a celebrity Dillinger was at the time, to the extent that when he was being held at Crown Point jail after his capture, the female Sheriff Lilian Holley and other officials posed with him for photographs as if he was a film star! Holley is played by the wonderful Lilli Taylor who like everyone except for Depp gets way too little screen time or character development. We are not shown her reaction to Dillinger's escape or what happened later - she was unfairly blamed and fired from her post with many claiming the escape would not have happened if a man was in charge at Crown Point. We also are not shown what happened to Dillinger's accomplice Herbert Youngblood, who in reality died in a shootout with police a few weeks later.

Another part of the real story that Mann does not exploit was the friction between J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis. Both men used the media extensively to draw attention to their activities, but when Hoover felt Purvis was getting too much attention, he worked to undermine him to the extent that Purvis left the FBI sin 1935. Christian Bale flits in and out of the movie and as mentioned we learn next to nothing about him. The other members of the Dillinger gang are largely anonymous hoods in Public Enemies unlike in the 1973 movie 'Dillinger' where the likes of Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Dreyfuss & Steve Kanaly give excellent performances. The 1973 John Milius version of the Dillinger story, huge liberties are taken with the facts, such as having Pretty Boy Floyd & Youngblood in the Dillinger gang but it aces 'Public Enemies' in every way. Warren Oates was perfect as Dillinger while Ben Johnson's cigar chomping Purvis burns with quiet rage while in pursuit. Milius's take on the story is as lively and energetic as 'Public Enemies' is slow and lifeless.

Apparently the director of this movie, the ridiculously named Olivier Megaton used to be a graffiti artist - and on this showing I suggest he should dust his cans off and return to defacing buildings rather than our screens. Like McG's pathetic Charlies Angels films & Kaos's laughable Ballistic, Megaton serves up an action movie so silly and implausible it makes one feel he and the others have no respect for the audience. As usual our hero Frank has to transport something from one place to another and of course gets into chases and plenty of fights. Now some of the driving sequences are good, but the problem with this movie is there is NO tension - you know whatever spot Frank gets himself into he'll get out of it, whether it's beating up a roomful of guys,catching up a high performance car on a pushbike or surviving underwater while floating a car to the surface with a couple of shopping bags. There were so many preposterous incidents in this movie I actually started to feel a little angry by the end. Also preposterous was the idea that Frank would get romantically involved with his air headed pill popping passenger Natalya Rudakova who must rank alongside Tanya Roberts in 'A View to a Kill' as the worst love interest in an action movie ever. She does have a refreshingly different look, but it would take a very skilled actress to make her character likable and she has none. In Ed Harris's wonderful Appaloosa, two louts who think it's clever to relieve themselves in a saloon get shot dead for their conduct. Sadly Harris doesn't teleport into this movie to mete out the same treatment to Rudakova as she does the same in a store. Statham does his usual strip to show everyone how buff he is and to be honest does the best he can with the material, but personally the only good thing about the movie is the presence of Robert Knepper. Its great to see him getting cast in movies, but his talents deserve better than this. I do enjoy action movies but stuff like this just shows contempt for the audience. Transporter 3 is every bit as stupid as the directors name.

After watching Jess Franco's dreadful 'Women of Cellblock 9', where the women are simply eye candy torture victims, it was great to see this one. A hard as nails stuntwoman Laurie Collins (Karen Chase) gets herself imprisoned in the same jail her sister was murdered in and sets about wiping out those responsible. Like most movies of this type, the script leaves a lot to be desired, with prison guards who seem to vanish whenever convenient and nobody twigs that it just MIGHT be the new girl with martial arts skills who is reducing the prison population! What is good about 'Vendetta' is the cast (notably the head bad girl Kay played by Sandy Martin) really do look like convicts, rather than the perfect bodied playboy starlet types who usually end up in movies like this. Real life stuntwoman Karen Chase is no pin-up and is believable in her role as she kicks her enemies to death as well as showing decent acting talent. The ending of the movie is as daft as the rest of it - Laurie has killed several women and perhaps an abusive guard but she's released!. it is however made clear that she knows her killing rampage has not changed a thing - her sister will not be coming back.

Vendetta is a must see for fans of female 'B' movies & deserves a decent DVD re-release.

Some reviewers seem to miss what Haneke is doing in this movie and need to have a look at a 'conventional' rich people in peril movie like the Australian 'Storm Warning' to see how the whole genre is subverted. The original 'Funny Games' played to an 'art house' audience, many of whom were unaccustomed to the kind of horror movies it aimed to examine.

In 'Funny Games' (both versions), the wealthy family are invaded, but in 'Storm Warning' it is the wealthy who break into the home of the 'villains'. They then proceed to look down their noses at them even though they've provided them with shelter and generally do everything to get into their bad books. The 'heroes' never apologise for what they do and despite being told there are no phones or main roads they keep on asking as if what the boonies say doesn't count and rather than be relieved they have some shelter, the heroine calls her hosts 'cavemen'. In the first act it is clearly the wealthy who are breaking the rules with their disregard for the privacy of the country dwellers, yet we are supposed to sympathise with them because they are 'cultured' as opposed to the ugly, dirty antagonists. After the incapacitation of the male, the woman predictably engineers the demise of their captors via some truly nonsensical plot developments, but of course its OK, because the script has demonised the 'evil' trio and they were 'fighting for their lives'. But by the same token, were not the 'bad guys' equally justified in killing them, as the heroes placed themselves in a position where it would be foolhardy for the trio to release them.

In 'Funny Games', the tormentors are not unwashed half-wits, but as clean and cultured as their victims. They play out their cruel games with civility which is at odds with their malice. All the usual things happen, but the family are indeed doomed as unlike 'Storm Warning', the heroine does not out of nowhere develop incredible survival skills. The horror audience normally endures the suffering of the heroes in anticipation of their violent revenge, but in 'Funny Games' this does not happen. Unlike the antagonists in 'Storm Warning' they have no reason to kill and they do not make the kind of silly mistakes which litter the Australian movie.

Audiences who are conditioned to seeing good prevail over evil are left empty when we see the last family member murdered and the homicidal couple move on to another set of victims. We are not even given some kind of reason why they had to die. Some have used the rather silly term 'torture porn' to describe this 'Funny Games', but it is a much more sophisticated work than anything churned out by the makers of 'Hostel'. There are no gory special effects or gruesome death scenes, no high tempo chase sequences, just a lot of restrained tension. In terms of the production, Naomi Watts is less effective than Susanne Lothar was in the original. When Peter & Paul made Lothar strip in the original the feeling of shame was much stronger, because her body looked looked like that of a normal woman, unlike the highly toned Ms Watts. Also while Lothar gets dressed immediately after her humiliation. Ms Watts seems too comfortable in her underwear. Tim Roth is passable in his role, but it would have been interesting to see an actor like Matt 'Jason Bourne' Damon or Keifer 'Jack Bauer' Sutherland cast, who we'd expect prevail in a physical encounter placed in his powerless state.

Though inferior to the original, 'Funny Games' is an effective experiment which plays with the perceptions of the audience, and it works even better if compared to the likes of 'Storm Warning'

'Storm Warning' started off well, but soon degenerated into one of the silliest movies I've seen for a long time. Its the classic tale of Pia & Rob, two well to do urbanites who fall foul of the inhabitants of a secluded farmhouse. Facing likely death, it is the woman Pia who takes on the three deranged villains. It's obvious the captors were not supposed to be smart, but the level of stupidity they display is incredible - would anyone imprison captives in a barn full of potential weapons? Earlier in the movie while Pia was fishing, she was so physically inept she couldn't manage to reel in a fish, but she miraculously turns into a female John Rambo whenever the plot requires it. Add a bloodthirsty guard dog who conveniently disappears every time Pia is running about and other implausible actions by all you have a very disappointing movie. On the plus side, the performances from all involved are excellent, but they deserved to be in a better written movie than this one. Gore fans will love it though.

In 'Women of Cellblock 9', the women get captured, the women get naked, the women get tortured and the women get killed. Most of the scenes are of the four women chained by the neck naked as one by one they are led away to be tortured. They escape by using the tired old 'lets have a lesbian orgy' trick and of course the lame guard falls for it! Two lame karate chops later (incredibly the only fighting in the movie), our nude quartet flee the camp, but one is shot dead almost immediately. Her dim cellmates drop the only weapon they have and head for the jungle with the wicked warden in pursuit. After an unexciting chase featuring lots of clumsily edited stock footage of crocodiles, the two remaining girls are gunned down. End of movie.

This disaster fails as a Women In Prison feature because it breaks the mould in the worst possible way - the heroines die without taking any of the bad guys with them. I can put up with any amount of sick torture in a WIP movie if the women get to exact some bloody revenge and escape!

Absolute rubbish of the highest order from Franco made even worse by the news one of the nudie convicts was underage at the time the film was made.

'Two Tigers' is a sadly flawed movie which is crippled from the outset by the poor script and hideous acting from the two female leads. Neither Selena Khoo or Andrea Osvart is speaking their native tongue, but one wonders if they would look any better if they were. The movie concerns a crack female assassin Gilda (Osvart) who is sent on a mission to kill an Arabic businessman. On arrival she notices that the woman in the opposite apartment is a prostitute Lin (Khoo). After helping her fight off some heavies with some of the most ponderous and inept martial arts moves ever seen, the two become friends. But alas, her handlers order her to kill an expatriate Frenchman and his lover, who happens to be Lin. 'Two Tigers' cannot seem to make up it's mind whether it is a drama studying females whose lives are governed by men or a straight action picture. It fails as drama because nobody in the film can act. In Ms Khoo's lengthy (and obviously self penned) resume, she claims that she returned from Hollywood due to a lack of good roles for Asian women. The truth is more likely that she couldn't get any work because she is a terrible actress incapable of delivering any of her lines convincingly. Khoo only looks good on screen when she's silently posing in various states of undress, but she instantly looks years older the second she pulls any kind of facial expression. She claims to be 29, yet she did undoubled nude scenes with Robert Patrick in the Albert Pyun movie 'Hong Kong '97' which was made in 1994. So according to her she was 15 or 16 when she did the Pyun movie – something which I find hard to believe. Osvart fails to be convincing in her role as an assassin, and here is the other glaring fault of the movie – the 'action' is appallingly executed. Gilda's two 'hits' are done with absolutely no sense of tension or excitement as. she turns up, takes aim, kills and leaves. Even worse are the 'martial arts' scenes, where the bad guys crumple from the lamest looking kicks and punches imaginable. There is a scene at Lin's dojo where a line of students watch in fake awe as Lin and then Gilda demonstrate their pathetic martial arts 'skills' and the script adds even more contempt for the audience by having Lin asking Gilda 'what Dan are you'? I honestly have seen better fight choreography from teenagers goofing around on youtube than from the inept producers of 'Two Tigers' Unless you find the characters pleasant to look at, there is nothing to recommend in 'Two Tigers'. It seems that the producers obviously went with the old Godard line that all you need is a girl and a gun, but forgot that you also need a little talent behind and in front of the camera.

I did enjoy the original Hostel, but this was so predictable the only good thing about it is that Roth managed to keep the budget low. What really made me angry was the overall stupidity of the plot. Any killer knows that it makes sense to kidnap and kill people who won't be missed. Killing wealthy Americans as the Hostel owners are doing in this movie would soon lead to the discovery of their organisation.

Our two 'hot' heroines and their geeky companion (the woefully wasted Heather Materazzo) are lured to the Hostel by a glamorous life model. Materazzo is tricked by the other two into getting drunk & goes off with a guy who takes her to the torture dungeon. Poor Heather ends up getting cut up by a Elizabeth Bathory type woman who bathes in her blood. Like Tarantino in the crappy 'Death Proof' we have the 'cool' female characters putting a friend in danger and not caring. The sub plot with the two American hostel visitors was just as pointless with role reversal at the end just plain daft & I absolutely HATED the 'Don't kill me, my daddy has lots of money' ending.

Hostel II has no tension, no excitement no originality and isn't even scary or shocking. No doubt Roth will return to the horror genre, but he'll have to work much harder than this to retain an audience.

'Naked Fear' opens with a terrified naked woman being stalked and killed by a faceless hunter. The premise of hunters stalking and killing humans is of course nothing new, from 'The Most Dangerous Game' to the 'Predator' movies, but rarely has the idea been done as well with a low budget. Danielle De Luca stars as Diana, a naive young woman who ends up working in a seedy strip joint in a town where game hunting is an obsession and women seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate. However as they are all drifters, strippers or prostitutes, nobody cares except a newly posted cop Dwight (Arron Shiver). After a night at work, Diana wakes up naked in the wilderness with an armed killer on her trail. 'Naked Fear' could have at this point simply turned into a boring exploitationer with the main purpose for the camera to linger on De Lucas' nude body as she runs from her nemesis, but instead director Thom Eberhardt crafts a suspenseful and enthralling movie. De Luca is naked for a long section of the movie, but the director shoots the movie in a way that it's clear the fate of Diana is what is important, not her nudity. Eberhardt also underplays the gore as he never shows any of the torture the hunter inflicts on Diana before letting her loose in the wild. I found this refreshing after watching Eli Roth delighting in the torture of women in the risible 'Hostel II' & Danielle De Luca is very good in a demanding physical role which must have taken a lot of bravery to do. As the story unfolds 'Naked Fear' stays believable,as Diana does not suddenly develop kick boxing skills or make elaborate traps like Rambo. Also, the actions of the local townspeople from Dwight to Diana's flatmate Rita (Lisa Hill) never seem unrealistic (though the ending did seem a little out of place after everything which had gone before it).

The underlying message of the movie is that Diana, Rita and the other strippers and prostitutes to many of the townspeople are as worthless as the deer the locals kill for fun. Don't be put off by the nudity as the worst thing about 'Naked Fear' is its rather lurid title.

If you find the idea of a killer hunting naked women as game preposterous, this movie is amazingly based on real life killer Robert Hansen. In the late 1970's Hansen kidnapped female dancers and prostitutes before stripping them naked and hunting them down in Alaska. He killed 15 women before he was caught.

Director Lindsay Shonteff apparently saw himself as neglected genius frozen out by the film establishment on both sides of the Atlantic, but on the basis of Big Zapper, they were right! It is simply awful in every department - bad acting, a terrible script, shoddy action and lame attempts at 'humour'. The only thing good about this movie is Shonteff gives the female lead all the action, unlike so many action heroines who are relegated to second fiddle behind a male star. Unfortunately, Linda Marlowe, who must have been cast because a slight facial resemblance to the wonderful Diana Rigg is thoroughly unconvincing as a screen fighter. Then again, the likes of Pam Grier or Reiko Ike would probably look just as bad being directed by Shonteff.The action scenes are simply absurd, with pride of place going to a scene near the end of the movie. Confronted by about ten guys, she somersaults through the air landing behind a handy heavy machine gun and shoots them down like ninepins! As a fan of female action cinema, this one was a huge disappointment. looking at the late Mr Shonteff's website it seems there was a sequel made which features the respected actor Alan Lake as a villain. It's a measure of how low things had got in the British film industry that he was forced to act in stuff like this.

'Grindhouse' is the first Tarantino or Rodriguez movie that I've seen that has left me feeling rather flat. Sure it's niftily directed and very funny in parts, but on the whole I think that Tarantino especially has to really ditch these vanity projects of his now. 'Kill Bill' was his homage to Kung Fu cinema, but it worked because it was so much better than the source material. The same cannot be said for both 'Planet Terror' & 'Death Proof', which are in turn average zombie and car chase movies. There is a lot of good stuff to be seen and fun to be had, but for the first time Tarantino's dialogue felt desperately laboured in 'Death Proof'. I just didn't buy any of those conversations the women were having - they just sounded like dirty mouthed men in women's bodies & I half expected the male cast of 'Reservoir Dogs' to walk in and start explaining what 'Like a Virgin' meant.

The action and gore is very well done in 'Planet Terror', but as a comedy zombie movie it isn't a patch on 'Sean of the Dead'. Likewise despite a wonderful performance from Kurt Russell, 'Death Proof' in no way measures up to 'Duel', 'Driver' or 'Mad Max 2'. It's just too disjointed and though the final chase is executed superbly, the transformation of Russell from the hunter to the hunted did not ring true at all - and why wasn't the car he was driving death proof?. It's obvious both Tarantino, Rodriguez and the entire cast had a blast making this movie, but they seem to have forgotten that the audience need to entertained to the same measure. the disappointing returns for this movie seem to spell that out loud and clear.

Hopefully the poor box office will send a clear message to Quentin that it's time to leave the playground.

I love this movie. Maria Ford is beautiful and deadly and god knows why she did not make more martial arts movies like this. I read here that she was only cast in the film when the original star Charlie Spradling refused to do a topless fight scene. I applauded Spradling at first for making an ideological stand, (and I was quite anti Ford at first) but then found Spradling has actually done nude sequences which are far less empowering than the scene she supposedly objected to.

Spradling's character Britt appears early in the film and is an irritating swaggering imitation of a 'tough guy' male. She defeats several guys with martial arts but is easily beaten up and killed by a giant psychopathic soldier called Kell. Enter Ms Ford as her sister Jo. Everything Spradling does wrong, the talented Ms Ford does right. Her character is not trying to act 'male' in any way - she is confident, sexy and totally feminine. However when she fights nothing will stop her. Ms Ford must kill about 20 men with firearms and her body in this movie and what is satisfying is she has no 'super powers - she is just trained, fit and ruthless. The most famous scene is where Jo stays over at the house of the irritatingly fake 'female pop star' and her 'lesbian' lover . Several goons enter the house to kill or kidnap them but they don't count on the presence of Jo, who leaps from her bedroom dressed only in a thong and proceeds to destroy them with her hands and feet. Some have claimed that this scene was exploitative, but the thugs attacked at night - it's 99% certain that in a hot climate Jo would sleep in her underwear or nude. A friend of mine told me how she was awoken in her home when she heard an intruder. She was in bed naked at the time but confronted the startled thief and chased him out of her house without getting dressed! Regarding Ms Ford's body she is unconventional and refreshingly real for a 'B' actress with her then small breasts & untanned skin. The fact she is topless with her buttocks exposed makes her destruction of the attackers even more explosive and satisfying - here is an unarmed almost naked woman who uses deadly force to defend herself, crushing one man to death with her bare foot and snapping her final opponents neck with a beautifully executed roundhouse kick. Of course the whole sequence is silly - why do the intruders all seemingly run to separate regions of the house to be beaten to death one by one when they could have overwhelmed their female opponent easily by staying together? I'm pretty sure it was not the intention of the director to produce a scene which appealed to women, but watching Maria Ford fight so powerfully and convincingly in attire which we normally associate with female passivity and the oppression of the 'glamour' industry is amazing. Straight afterwards she has a sex scene, but it's notable that she initiates the encounter and dominates it.

It's not all good news though - there are a couple of embarrassing 'pop videos' which feature topless women for no reason other than 'eye candy' and Ford herself performs a silly and pointless striptease, but these obvious inserted scenes of titillation do not spoil the whole experience. I also liked that Jo is not invulnerable - she takes a savage beating in the final confrontation with Kell and realistically needs help to take him down. I heartily recommend this movie to those who want to see a powerful, uninhibited performance from an under appreciated star. It's a pity Quentin Tarantino didn't cast her as 'The Bride' in 'Kill Bill' as apparently he (like me) is a huge fan.

Shame on those women who have labelled 'Baise Moi' as misogynistic porn. This movie is the hardest hitting feminist statement ever committed to film. While many 'feminist' directors tend to go for soft edge, sugar coated tales which deal with emotions, nurturing and bonding, thus compounding all the stereotypes regarding women, Baise Moi goes for the jugular – that women placed in adverse circumstances can be every bit as vicious and ruthless as their male oppressors. Coralie may have a bit to learn as a director, but her rawness actually adds to the electric experience of watching this movie. I had read mixed reviews but left feeling both angry and uplifted at the same time. Angry because the film shows the kind of exploitation faced by women every day, but uplifted because of the sheer force these sisters use to satisfy their own desire for sexual and physical freedom from men and society in general. Both leads embark on their crime spree after murdering somebody close to them. Manu shoots her brother after he is unsympathetic after she has been raped, while Nadine beats her repressed flatmate to death. In both cases our heroines reject in the strongest possible terms the attempts of their victims to condemn their lifestyles. Much of the accusations that Baise –Moi is not a feminist piece come from Manu & Nadine's first murder as a couple. They kill a wealthy looking woman in order to steal money. I reject this argument because this wealthy woman with her designer clothes and jewellery is like many women part of the problem. Across the road from her are two women in need of help, but she ignores them as she withdraws cash she has obviously come by as a willing and subservient pawn of patriarchy. Are male heroes expected to be so noble when they pursue their goals? – of course not. The couple subsequently commit more murders for the hell of it, including the brutal beating to death of a guy who employs them for sex, then announces he wants a condom. Some have asked why he deserved to die as he was not aggressive to the women and I give two reasons. Firstly he aimed to exploit their bodies for money and secondly he implied they were dirty, diseased and unclean. More killings follow, including a couple of cops, a criminal businessman and the male and female patrons of a swingers bar. It is interesting to note which men they encounter survive – these are men they choose to have sex with on their terms, who don't try to dirty the proceedings by owning the women by offering money and let the women gratify themselves sexually. There is a message for all men here. My only gripe about this movie is that we do not see the women become lovers. I am sure that Coralie could have given audiences a far more realistic picture of how women really make love to counter the male porn industry stereotypes with their soft focus lighting, big haired synthetic moaning Barbie dolls and wailing saxophone music. Showing the women reject men as an option when considering a deeper relationship would have made this film a 10. Regarding the sex content, it is explicit and though lesbians do not particularly want to see throbbing penises, it is obvious the sequences were shot with women in mind. Coralie concentrates on female pain and humiliation during the rape scene and female pleasure during the later sex sequences. For those who dismiss this movie as porn, I suggest they look at the definition of pornography in any dictionary. True porn is produced to elicit an erotic arousal rather than an aesthetic or intellectual response. Bearing this in mind anyone can see that Baise Moi, though containing scenes which are explicit is NOT pornographic. Baise Moi makes the viewer if she is really watching think and feel, not grope for the Kleenex like most male viewers probably hoped.

All in all this is a must see for all women who are truly liberated. This is a revenge movie with a difference.