Harbinger Down (2015)

This is another film which I backed on kickstarter, and am watching as a digital download.  Harbinger Down's selling point was that it is a "practical effects" horror film.  That means that it eschews CGI in favour of using models, miniatures, make-up and costumes.  The techniques, in other words, of such classics of the genre as Alien and The Thing.

The kickstarter itself specifically called out those two movies as inspirations for this one, but even if you hadn't read that, I doubt you'd have any trouble picking up the common lineage, especially with John Carpenter's renowned film.  Like The Thing, this film features an isolated group in a hostile, bitterly cold and isolated location (albeit at the opposite end of the world).  Like The Thing, it posits that an artefact is found in the ice: an artefact that contains a dangerous life form capable of mutating its form.

This is not to say that this is a slavish copy of the earlier film.  Harbinger Down has its own set of characters with their own set of motivations and relationships.  I think it's given more scope in this regard by its inclusion of characters of differing genders and more varied professions.  It also has a less tense and more pulpy feel to it.  While it does includes some of the same themes of paranoia, with the question of 'who can be trusted?', they're much less prominent than in the Carpenter film, and the context in which they are asked is also somewhat different.

So with its inspirations clear, how is the film?  It's not bad at all, actually.  The cast are good, and the effects - while not as strikingly memorable as the two films that so inspired it - are well executed (very well, given the budget).  The script is generally sound as well.  There are a few slightly rough moments, but it whips along at a decent clip and doesn't really let the pace slacken once the monster comes into the open.

Really the biggest criticism I can level at the film is that it wears its inspiration a little too obviously on its sleeve.  The parallels to The Thing are strong and numerous, and while this is a capable enough bit of old school horror, it is not in the same class as The Thing.  Of course, few movies are.

If you're the kind of film wonk who is passionate about practical effects work, or you just have a hankering for a straightforward horror flick that's not laden down with a hundred gaudy CGI shots (I'm a bit of both of the above, myself), this is worth the 80 minute investment to watch it.

I hope these folks get to make another film - one that distances itself a bit more from its inspirations, preferably.

Death Rage (1976)

The ad copy for this film tried desperately to cast it as a spiritual successor to Charles Bronson's Death Wish, which was released two years earlier.  This aspiration is thwarted mostly by the fact that it is very boring.

A New York mobster is gunned down in Naples, and the Americans decide they have to respond in kind.  Their chosen agent is Peter Marciani, a deadly hitman who retired several years earlier after the death of his brother.  Marciani is coaxed back for one more hit by a simple formula: the target - a man named Gallo - murdered his brother.

Marciani's plan seems to mostly be to swan around Naples while hooking up with a much younger woman and occasionally killing any of Gallo's men who try to take him out.  He's aided in his nebulous plans by an eager young man who aspires to the life of a gangster, and hindered (barely) by the attentions of the chronically incompetent Naples police.

For a movie called Death Rage, this film displays an almost total lack of passion.  Yul Brynner portrays the lead role - his last performance, if IMDB is to be believed - with stolid indifference.  Most of the rest of the cast meanwhile are Italian, and their English dialogue is clumsily dubbed and clumsily performed.  Of course, they're not helped by a lethargic script, which stumbles along as disinterestedly as the acting.  Even the "twist" ending is utterly banal and predictable.

Italian knock-offs / homages of well known films (pick the term you think suits best) are rarely good, but they can sometimes be energetic or esoteric enough to be entertaining.  This somnambulistic effort is none of those things.  Avoid, unless you're suffering from insomnia.

Double Dragon (1994)

I'll start with an important PSA: if you're the kind of person who loves mind-boggingly, bewildering stupid and terrible movies (in other words, a person like me), then you should ignore that "Not Recommended" tag and hunt down a copy of Double Dragon immediately.  It is a film of sublime and surprising awfulness.

It's not surprising that it is awful, of course.  The words "Let's make a Double Dragon movie." never had a high chance of leading anywhere good.  But the form of its awfulness ... this is a film that continually finds someway to "top" its last most of random stupidity with an event even more random and stupid.

So for those of you too young to remember it, the plot of the the Double Dragon arcade game was very simple: bad guys kidnap the woman you love, so you beat them up until you get her back.  I suspect the movie's problems began when someone said "That's not enough of a plot."  Which is nonsense.  It's a perfectly serviceable plot for a film.  Make it paternal rather than romantic love, and you have the lynchpin of Liam Neeson's recent career.

But for some reason, it was felt that the adaptation of a game that was all about fighting bad guys should be about something else entirely.  What should that something else be?  As far as I can tell, the writers tried to answer that question while locking themselves in a room with a copy of The Warriors and a whole pile of drugs.  The result is mesmerisingly bad.  Wildly uneven characterisation.  Awkward attempts to be a PG-rated Robocop (with 10% of the budget, if the effects are anything to go by).  Sudden diversions into Looney Tunes-esque physical comedy.  Magic martial arts powers that are inspired more by Street Fighter than anything in the Double Dragon game.  Street gangs that work shifts you can set your watch to.  Street gangs on unicycles.

I'm not going to bother trying to explain the plot, beyond "there's a magic amulet and everyone is fighting over it", because frankly none of it makes a lick of sense anyway, and it really needs to be experienced to be believed.

Astonishingly, wonderfully awful.

Knightriders (1981)

I like that this movie has the courage to have characters who strongly oppose one another, without casting one side as the heroes and the others as the villains.  The closest the film comes to a 'bad guy' is in one of the supporting cast.  It's a pretty bold and interesting choice; it's certainly not every day you see a movie where after their battle is done, the antagonists share a friendly hug.

Unfortunately, this is also a movie that fails on a number of other fronts.  The two most important though, are:

1. there's pretty much nobody in this movie who isn't a jackass; and
2. what they're all fighting over is frankly kind of dumb

So what the film presents us with is a group of people who have decided to reject what they see as the corrupt and venal life of ordinary society and embrace the dream of a more noble age: the age of Camelot.  They do this by travelling around the country as a kind of Renaissance Fair deal, except that they do their jousting from motorcycles, not horses.  Their leader is "King" William, who holds the position because the whole thing was his idea, but who can be replaced if he is ever made to yield in combat.

Now you may be thinking "So they reject modern society in favour of (re-)creating one with an explicit caste system, where leadership is definitionally determined by physical force?".  I sure was.  Through most of the movie, I was trying to work out if the film was deliberately painting the characters as completely lacking in self-awareness, or whether the lack lay with the writers.  Alas, I tend to think it was the latter.

"King" William (Billy, to his friends) is something of a petulant prima donna.  One of the first things we see him do is self-flagellation, to give you an idea of the kind of person we're talking about.  Alas, his potential usurper, Morgan, is a philandering jackass, so he's not exactly someone you'd want to be cheering on either.

The catalyst that brings this incipient rivalry into open conflict is the 'bad guy' I mentioned before: a talent agent who has visions of turning the troupe into a highly choreographed arena show.  Medieval pro-wrestling, basically.  Billy hates the idea, considering it anathema to his entire philosophy.  Morgan on the other hand is a fan of the idea, and so the battle lines - such as they are, anyway - are drawn.

Like I said, there's not really a villain here (though there are plenty of jerks), so the plot will likely surprise you in how it unfolds.  On the other hand, at 145 minutes in length, it's probably close to a half-hour too long, and the final ten minutes in particular seem very indulgent.  I'm reminded of Easy Rider, and if you've read my review of that film, you'll know that's not a positive comparison.

Attack on Leningrad (2009)

I suspect that many of us instinctively think of sieges as being a medieval phenomenon, becoming obsolete with the invention of powerful gunpowder weapons.  In actual fact one of the greatest sieges in human history occurred in the 20th century.

It's true that at a mere 882 days in length, the siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) cannot compare in duration to the 21 year siege of Candia (now Heraklion).  But the Nazi envelopment of the city during World War 2 is one of the most destructive sieges in history, and in terms of human lives, it is by far the most costly.  Total deaths are estimated at 1.5 million.  To put that number in context, it is more than the total war dead suffered by the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy.  Combined.

This film revolves around a British journalist who accidentally becomes trapped in the city - presumably a nod toward making the film more accessible to English-speaking audiences - and the Soviet citizens with whom she interacts.  In particular, a pair of children and a female police constable.

Now this is a film about a bleak time in history, and make no mistake that it is a bleak film. It is not a movie where everyone gets a happy ending.  Nor even one where they all get the endings they deserve. So it will not be to all tastes.  But it is also a film about two women who go through an astonishingly challenging and frightening experience with dignity and strength and compassion.  Whatever their fate may be - the film deserves more than for me to spoil it - they win a victory simply from the way they face it.

Worth your time if you are okay with subtitles (significant portions of the film are in English, but much of it is in Russian or German), and the grim subject matter.

City of War (2009)

No-one knows how many people died in the Nanjing Massacre: most estimates generally place the numbers killed by the Japanese Army as between 40,000 and 200,000 people, though the Chinese government claims 300,000 and some Japanese nationalists deny there was a massacre at all.

What is known is that roughly a quarter million Chinese civilians were sheltered in the "Nanking Safety Zone".  This demilitarised area was established and maintained by an international committee of American, British and German representatives.  The leader of the committee was John Rabe, a German, and a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.

Like the more famous Oscar Schindler, Rabe was a Nazi party member who used his position - and his own personal wealth - to protect the lives of those considered enemies of the Reich or its allies.  I'm not going to compare the two men's achievements: it doesn't matter who took more risks, sacrificed more, or saved more lives.  Both men deserve to have their efforts recognised and celebrated.

Obviously this film is an account of Rabe's activities, and a good one, though I do think it errs to much into fictionalisation at times.  The committee's achievements are quite dramatic enough without adding in late night chases, putting Rabe's wife on the USS Panay (an American gunboat sunk by the Japanese) or other such malarkey.

Despite the fictionalisation, however, this is a worthwhile film.  The cast is strong, and the depiction of Rabe is sufficiently nuanced that he doesn't feel whitewashed.  I'm glad I saw it, and learned Rabe's story.

Oasis of the Zombies (1983)

Let's start off with a quick bit of arithmetic.  If you have a character who was born in mid-1944 in a movie set no earlier than mid-1979, how old should they be?

If your answer is "Eh, who cares?", then congratulations - you could have a career working on turkeys like this film.

The character in question is the sort-of protagonist.  I say "sort of" because we don't see him until about ten minutes in, and then it's just to introduce a twenty minute flashback about how he came to be conceived (and incidentally to pad the running time with some stock footage from another film) ... and then we go back to the characters from the first ten minutes of the movie for a while longer.  So it is really not until the halfway point that he does more than read a letter from his deceased father.

Said letter explains the story of his conception during World War Two, and of the Nazi bullion his father left behind in the desert.  In about the only sane decision he will make in the film, the kid (he looks about 20, despite the fact that he should be 35) decides to go find the gold.  Of course, what he doesn't know is that he's not the only one who's looking for it.  Oh, and that it's guarded by zombie Afrika Korps soldiers.

Now as it happens our "hero" won't be in the dark on these two fronts for very long, because despite the rather lackadaisical approach he takes to the search, he manages to stumble right into a fatally injured rival gold-hunter.  Which at least ought to tell him that the place is dangerous, even if he doesn't believe the "walking dead' stories that people - including survivors of zombie attacks - keep telling him.

Frankly, it's enough to make you hope he ends up as zombie chow, but the film-makers are apparently under the mistaken impression that we want to see this guy survive, so there's no joy there.

This is a tedious affair, feeling considerably longer than its 84 minute run time.  Other than a couple of epic early 80s moustaches, there's nothing worthwhile to see.  Skip.