Reviews

This is my third time watching a German 3D production directed by Benjamin Eicher and Timo Joh. Mayer. My first was Amazing Ocean 3D (2013), followed by Faszination Rainforest (2012), and now this one Faszination Afrika (2011). With hindsight - literally, by watching these in reverse order - I can say that these two filmmakers and what I assume is their company NEW KSM represent the nadir of 3D nature documentarians who proliferated in the mid-00's during the peak of the long 3D revival, especially in Germany.

While Amazing Ocean has some excellent 3D visuals, watching this duo's lazy earlier work on dry land in Rainforest and Afrika, you realize that the only reason Ocean is even a modest mprovement is because whomever operated the camera was actually MOVING in the water, creating perspective changes ideal for 3D, along with the fact that the sea life moves around constantly, creating staggering depth throughout the picture. So basically, the currents and the sea life did the filmmakers' work for them!

On Rainforest and Afrika, these guys prove themselves basically incompetent at visuals and storytelling. In both films, they repeatedly just look their camera down at a distance, wait for some native animals to wander by sloooowly, or graze, or look around, and that's IT! The footage is in 3D, but they're generally so far away that nearly all of the depth only begins well 'into' your screen. Plus, the animals do virtually nothing, so it's the kind of footage you could shoot out of a Land Cruiser window on a safari.

In Afrika, the filmmakers intercut repetitive footage of a bushman chatting with his fellow tribesmen and with some unseen visitor, while the narration 'dubs' words over his mouth, making it seem as if he's giving some kind of travelogue about Namibia, when in reality he's doing nothing of the sort. Rainforest similarly has brief, badly shot interludes with a couple of aboriginal women who were likewise 'translated' by the narrator, with his dialogue in no way matching what they were saying. How these guys produced the run of docs that they did with 3D productions is beyond me, though I suspect the German craze for 3D during its heyday allowed even mediocre talents like these to load up with equipment and dump what are essentially home movies onto physical media to make a buck. I'm kinda glad those days are over in Germany, and that most of NEW KSM's output can now be had in the $4 - $6 range via Amazon Marketplace. Sadly, I've picked up too much of their stuff this way because I'm a 3D junkie, so I can only advise against buying their 'land-based' docs, even cheap. Their Amazing Ocean disc, on the other hand, does offer up slicker visuals, and a more energetic cast of sea critters, so it's not bad background noise.

Athletic high school girls are being abducted by a mysterious organization known as The Clown' that turns them into soulless super-soldiers in a bid to take over the world. Due to a mix-up, bumbling athlete Hoshino is abducted and given superpowers by The Clown, but is rescued from the facility by her gym teacher before 'brain wash surgery' can be performed to complete her transformation, and vows to battle the organization and its 'monster killers' to the very end as The Masked Girl.

This one-off tokusatsu production feels like a pilot that didn't get sent to series. I'm not sure if that's how these things work in Japan, but based on its 44-minute run time, it certainly feels like the case. The 2009 Hong Kong DVD on which I watched this lists a 90 minute run time on the case, but that's comprised of this single episode plus a 45-minute making of documentary.

The plot of the episode itself is simplistic and the characters severely underwritten with virtually zero development aside from gaining powers, and it's slowly paced, with the only twist being the revelation that people the heroine knows have also been influenced by the evil Clown organization. Beyond that and a couple of elaborate 'hero' costumes - particularly the Masked Girl's eventual 'plastic-armor-and-leather-strapping-on-a-bodysuit' get-up, capped with an imposing helmet and visor - this is a pretty middle-of-the-road affair, indistinguishable from countless others that likely did go on to become series but never flourished.

Bong Joon-ho's INFLUENZA was commissioned as part of a 'Jeonju Digital Project', a set of three digitally-shot short subjects p compiled for the 2004 Jeonju International Film Festival. The other participants were Hong Kong's Yu Lik-Wai, and Japan's Sogo Ishii. Bong's standout contribution details the downward slide of an unemployed, and seemingly unemployable, 31-year-old Seoul man (Yoon Je-moon) into a life of increasingly violent robberies. The city's omnipresent CCTV and security cameras capture his every move and, eventually, his every murder, usually in the company of a nasty female companion (Go Su-hee) who's as greedy and remorseless as he is, their spree stitched together by the unseen authorities (a "mosaic documentary" as the director called it in an interview). The title presumably refers to random, similar acts of violence that occasionally and somewhat amusingly break out on the periphery of the main pair's activity. The production's cast is a mix of actors and real, unsuspecting citizens. The short was made after Bong's breakout hit MEMORIES OF MURDER, and prior to his even bigger smash THE HOST, and is very much part and parcel of those and most of his later works. He'd found his groove in features fairly quickly, so his success at channeling and compressing his notions about mankind in general and Korean society in particular into a short subject comes as no surprise. Mostly available via streaming sites years after its release, INFLUENZA finally saw the light of day in 2020 as a standalone DVD release in North America from Grasshopper Film. Regardless of the format, it's definitely worth viewing, but the disc might be better signed out from a well-stocked local library if you have one; otherwise the film and the supplements on the DVD (two press conferences and a teaser trailer) might have been better served as bonuses on, say, the Criterion release of MEMORIES OF MURDER. Either way, it's nice to have it available for those looking to fit a missing piece into their experience with the director's oeuvre.

NOTE: This review was written and published (in print!) in 1990, pre-IMDb, and when this movie had floating around video stores on VHS tape for several years.

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As a double bill, Oswaldo de Oliveira's AMAZON JAIL and Jess Franco's HELLHOLE WOMEN can't be beat. They're practically identical.

In AMAZON JAIL, some nubile (and, for the most part, suspiciously not lesbian) slave-chicks have been abducted from gawd-knows-where by an evil slaver who looks a lot like David Crosby on a pure Crisco diet. He in turn sells them to the highest bidder during orgies he holds in his Italian-deco living room. Here, more slobbering fat guys shove their faces into the continually shimmying asses of the limboing lovelies.

Of course, where there's women being dominated, there's always a subset who're just itchin' for liberation. So would you after several days of sex through bamboo cage bars. The broad squad heads out into the jungle, where they survive by sweating, arguing, and revealing their breasts to nature.

AMAZON JAIL is so cheap it makes the similarly rated HELLHOLE WOMEN (and most Jess Franco sleaze for that matter) look like a masterpiece of eroticism. Plenty of zooms and out-of-focus shots means you can tell your parents (who're bound to catch you watching this crap) that this piece-o-crap is art! The english dubbing (done in Berlin) seems to frequently disagree with the action on screen. As with HELLHOLE WOMEN, AMAZON JAIL often feels like it might have originated as hardcore piece of Brazilian adventure-sleaze edited down to softcore Brazilian adventure-sleaze, but alas we may never know.

Plenty of skin and lots of gruelling babes-in-the-woods material do not a B-movie make, though. If this wasn't so damned derivative and predictable, it might be a good rental. HELLHOLE WOMEN tries much more valiantly to achieve trashdom and largely succeeds. Since these flicks should be judged equally by their shock values - gratuitous tits, lesbians and chicks-in-chains - AMAZON JAIL just doesn't cut it.

Fred Olen Ray has made some better flicks in his time, but rarely anything funnier than Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

Where else would you find a prostitute who discreetly covers a poster of Elvis before carving her latest john into luncheon meat?

It all begins when private dick Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson) is hired to track down a runaway named Sam (Linnea Quigley, Queen of the B's). He soon finds out she's joined the prestigious ranks of the Chainsaw Bimbos to avenge the death of a friend. And guess who's leading our Sisters of Perpetual Dismemberment? Why, it's none other than the king of the Black & Decker's, Gunnar "Leatherface" Hansen.

Unfortunately, Gunnar, while looking really spooky, has the thesping ability and vocal inflection of processed cheese. His best scene comes when he can't start the chainsaw. Now that's funny, but I liked him better when he groaned and farted and screamed his way through the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But he's here, and he's in on the joke, and that's just fine.

To counteract Gunnar's droll performance, Fred injects several tits (including Linnea's) and full frontals into the plot. The climactic battle between two saw-weilding jigglers is quite the scream.

This whole flick is a joke, played with such tongue-in-cheek audacity, one can forgive the endless barrage of REALLY STUPID gags and one-liners. Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers clearly has its intentions in the right place. They wanted to make a dumb comedy that showcased some curvaceous bodies, and they got one.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers can't really be classified as campy, since campy films often take themselves seriously. It's brain-mush, pure and simple, and worth checking out for that title alone.

This capsule review was written in 1992, when this film was a new release on home video, and published in a Canadian daily newspaper. And yes, I deliberately ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my 'final score' paragraphs back then.

THE PAMELA PRINCIPLE (Unrated) - Imperial Entertainment Video: So far this year, Alexander Gregory Hippolyte's Axis Films banner has released six of these softcore raunchfests, including this one, directed by porn auteur Paul Thomas, in which a guy facing a midlife crisis learns he's got everything he needs right at home AFTER he meets, beds, and moves in with a 20-year-old bisexual nympho.

The final score: Zero body count, unless you count the 16 naked ones; 16 popped tops; seven super-supremely naughty bits; Troy Donahue drops by to play a guy named Troy; and Frank Pesce, subject of the recent studio comedy 29th Street, disgraces his craft by playing the seedy club owner.

This review was written in 1992, when this movie was a new release on home video, and published in a Canadian daily newspaper (remember those?). And yes, I consciously ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my 'final score' wrap-ups back in those days.

COMRADES IN ARMS (Rated R) - Malo Video: Probably as a favour to some friend, the ever-cool Lance Henriksen (Aliens) takes the cushy sit-down role of CIA honcho Bob Reed in this progressively rotten actioner.

Reed's the man with the plan to send the American Delta Force (led by the overweight Rick Washburne) and the Soviet Red Army Spetnatz (led by the late Lyle Alzado) into Colombia to kick some drug dealer butt. Unfortunately, as Reed, Lance spends most of his part sitting in a big, comfy chair saying real serious stuff like "Somebody's gotta hang for this fiasco!" while his ragtag Rambos ring up the death tally.

The final score: Sixty-four body count with one squishy exploding head; three totalled cars; and so-so direction by J. Christian Ingvordsen (Mob War, Hangmen), who apparently discovered where the lens is on the camera.

Special thanks in the credits are given to the Ontario Film Office, leading me to wonder if Colombia isn't, in fact, some guys backyard in Mississauga.

This review was written in 1992, when this movie was a new release on home video, and was published in a Canadian daily newspaper. And yes, I consciously copied Joe Bob Briggs in my final paragraph back in those days.

SNAKEEATER III: HIS LAW (Rated R) - Cineglobe Video: Bikers, broads, breasts, and blown-up buildings - what B-movies are all about!

While I can't compare this killer sequel to its predecessors since I never saw them, I can say that is one of the best B action comedies of the year.

Lorenzo Lamas returns as Jack "Soldier" Kelly, an irreverent crimefighter with a twisted modus operandi. After getting suspended from the police force for "unethically" blowing the brains out of a would-be robber, Kelly is hired "under the table" by a wealthy couple whose daughter (Tracy Hway) was kidnapped, raped and severely traumatized by the local biker gang.

The subject matter may sound serious, it it's used pretty much to give Kelly someone to rescue when he runs out of ammo. This is the kind of guy who barters with a crazed druggie for "the rights to kill the hostage" and stabs another dude's feet to the floor.

When the bikers, led by the disgustingly fun Goose (Bam Bam Bigelow) abduct the girl again, Kelly teams up with Cowboy (Minor Mustain), a pistol-packin' wiseacre who's never at a loss for profane insults. Move over Murtaugh and Riggs, it's time for some new blood with better gags.

The final score: Sixteen body count, dispatched in inventive ways; five popped tops; two supreme naughty bits; wowie fight scenes; a great opening gag in a diner (Goose and his boys are so bad, they have reserved parking at the local choke 'n puke); Mustain gets all the best lines; Holly Chester becomes hollow chested when her boyfriend (Goose) finds out where Kelly hid her.

Three-time Snakeeater director George Erschbamer could head for the big leagues after a couple more flicks like this one.

(2023: well, we know that didn't really happen, but he still made some solid DTV action pictures during this era).

This review was written in 1992, when this movie was a new release on home video, and published in a Canadian daily newspaper. And yes, I consciously ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my final paragraph in those days.

STEPFATHER III (Rated R) - Malo Video: I think we owe the existence of this fine motion picture to Shelley Hack's portrayal of a screechy little slash-toy in the original Stepfather (1987). If it wasn't for Shelley, Meg Foster wouldn't have gotten the chance to play slash-toy no. 2 in Stepfather II (1990), and Priscilla Barnes and Season Hubley might never have kicked psycho butt in this latest instalment. Thanks, Shel!

Now that Terry O'Quinn is off making real movies like Company Business and The Rocketeer, Robert Wightman - the replacement John-Boy from TV's The Waltons, no less - takes the reins as the title character, a guy who wrote the book on how to pick up lonely single mothers.

Once again our demented daddy, fresh from his death at the end of Stepfather II, has escaped from the looney bin and, after some grisly back-alley plastic surgery, heads to Slashtoyville for fresh meat.

Falling for Priscilla proves risky when her wheelchair-bound son (David Tom) uses his computer to snoop into his new stepdad's shady past. And we all know what happens when the stepfather gets mad, don't we? First he starts mixing up people's names. Then he does the limbs. To be honest, though, the character hasn't killed an actual family since the first five minutes of the first movie. They keep killing him, but he always pops up for sequels.

The final score: Six body count; one totalled car; one shovel bashing (includes a bahoogie slice); surgical saw throat-slashing; rake stabbing; and a stupendously splashy, award-worthy tree-shredder finale.

Overall, much better than Part II, not as scary as Part I, but worth seeking out for the gore alone.

This review was originally written in 1992, when this movie was a new release on home video, and published in a daily newspaper (where my city desk editor wrote that cheesy headline). And yes, I consciously ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my final paragraph back in those days.

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (Rated R) - Columbia TriStar Home Video: If your idea of a good time, like mine, is watching Academy Award nominee (for Five Easy Pieces in 1970) Karen Black vomit up a slimy, translucent body bag around herself and then fill it up with a rich, bubbly bile, then this is the flick for you!

While Karen's participation has livened up many a drive-in trash flick (like Mirror, Mirror and the upcoming Auntie Lee's Meat Pies), the plot of this particular horror show concerns two teenage girls whose ritual friendship swim in a flooded crypt unleashes an ancient vampire/demon that promptly enslaves the quaint little town of Alburg.

One of the girls (Maya McLaughlin) becomes a "child of the night," but her friend Lucy (Amy Dolenz from Miracle Beach) teams up with a local teacher (Peter DeLuise from 21 Jump Street) and, eventually, the town drunk (Garrett Morris) to take on the big kahuna and his neck-munching minions.

Essentially what we have here is Buffy The Vampire Slayer done right - and for about half the cost. Too bad your local video barn will only have two or three copies on the shelf.

The final score: Nine body count with gross-but-silly gore; no popped tips, although desperate Karen wears a see-through nightie; Maya eats slugs; the vampires sleep with their "breathing apparatus" exposed, lending some truth to that saying "barf up a lung"; slam-bang direction from Tony Randel (Amityville 1992); a brilliant synth-orchestral score by David Licht; Josette DeCarlo as Officer Gates provides great comic relief; classy FX work by the KNB Effects Group; and an irrefutably smashing ending.

The following capsule review was written in 1992, when this film debuted on home video, and appeared in a daily newspaper. And yes, I totally ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my final paragraphs in those days.

FINAL EMBRACE (Rated R) - New Horizons Home Video: Score another low-budget bullseye for producer Roger Corman. This grittily little thriller offers up more inventive filmmaking and surprising twists than many recent A-list mysteries - and it's biggest marquee name is Dick Van Patten!

When a rock video superstar is iced, her twin sister (Nancy Valen) teams up with a rough L. A. cop (Robert Russell from Crisis In The Kremlin) to track down the killer (who could logically be just about anybody in the cast). Natch, we're kept guessing right up until the last three minutes when we're treated to one of the most nerve-tweaking endings ever seen in a B-flick.

The final score: eight body count; three totalled cars; four popped tops; two supremely naughty bits; gratuitous Dick Van Patten; two decent songs, "Oblivion" and "Touch Me In The Dark", sung by Nancy Valen; and a well-rounded script co-penned by Jim Wynorski, the director of the recent 976-EVIL 2.

This capsule review was published - in an actual newspaper, remember those? - on October 15, 1993, when it was first released on home video by AIP Video (not the same as American International Pictures, by the way) four years after being made:

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DEMON POSSESSED (R) - AIP Video: EVIL DEAD's 'spam-in-a-cabin' routine and WITCHBOARD's ouija board antics are mixed to not-bad effect as six snowmobiles (this has to be the world's first snowmobile horror flick) take refuge in an abandoned children's camp where they are systematically chunked up by an in-house shadow demon (or something like that). Shot in 1989 as THE CHILL FACTOR, this ultra-low-budgeter falters a bit in the logic department (especially when an otherwise eerie narration doesn't connect with the film's Twilight Zone ending), but showcases some tame-but-effective gore and a cast and crew of ambitious amateurs.

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Short stuff, for sure. When I reviewed this in '93, my weekly column focused on direct-to-video titles, particularly schlock like this, which could routinely be found filling up shelf space in video stores (especially mom 'n pop shops) but which was rarely reviewed outside of the back pages of horror mags, assuming you had access to them, and big-city fanzines, assuming you had access to those (the internet, still in its infancy, was essentially useless in this regard). Now, 30 years later, I'm tagging this old review to an IMDb listing in which most of the other reviewers have the advantage of Arrow Video's supplements-laden Blu-ray edition of Chill Factor. As they say, things were different back then, but the spirit of stumping for (or dumping on) b-movies hasn't changed much at all. We're just conditioned by the likes of Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, Severin et al to believe that all of these films - no matter how crappy and opportunistic - are somehow unheralded classics deserving of special editions loaded with supplements and collectors' booklets. It does get to be a bit much, but if it introduces new fans to old junk, what's the harm?

This capsule review was originally written and published (in an actual newspaper - remember those?) in August, 1993, when this film was released/dumped on home video in Canada by Astral Video:

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George Segal must've been on vacation (or lost) in Russia when he made this hooter-heavy exercise in medieval nonsense. As the only cast member not dubbed, Segal plays this widower who protects his neighbourhood mystic (Tamara Tana) from a bunch of barbaric villagers convinced she murdered a virgin at the annual Summer Moon Sex Picnic. Though the box sells it like a family-save adventure movie, The Clearing earns an R-rating for some serious skin and violence. That said, it's still kinda neat.

This is a MAINLAND CHINA movie, with absolutely zero funding or input from Hong Kong other than a couple of actors known for their histories within the HK industry. This is one of the problems the modern Hong Kong industry faces: viewers jumbling both industries together and/or defaulting to the Cantonese audio track on whichever format they view any new "Chinese" film. It really does the struggling HK industry a disservice to lump these awful Mainland pictures into the mix. Aside from that, though he's right: this is a very dull film.

I stumbled across one of producer/director Dwayne Buckle's many 2019 documentaries ("Analog: The Art & History of Reel-To-Reel Tape Recording") at my local library. That show is basically a hour of fuzzy vintage public domain clips with narration, the kind of piece that could easily be distilled to a third of its hour-long run time and put on YouTube.

Perusing Buckle's filmography did reveal one title of interest amid a slew of similarly non-descript and/or weird short docs: 2014's DINNER WITH LLOYD, a 68-minute visit with Troma Film honcho and independent film legend Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman has produced, written, directed and/or starred in literally hundreds of self-consciously schlocky movies. Buckle is given generous access to the man and his cluttered, chintzy New York City office building but apparently did little advance research on his subject, so the energetic Kaufman is left to do all the heavy lifting.

After a 26-minute guided tour of the building - during which Kaufman randomly pokes through some very cool Troma detritus while Buckle remains largely silent and only expresses interest in an old film reel rewinder (literally one of the least unique items in the building) because he doesn't know what it is! - the two sit down for a chat at Kaufman's memorabilia-blasted office. There, Buckle, without a mic (thankfully Kaufman has one), slumps in a chair, locks his two video cameras into the least interesting compositions possible, and lobs strangely generic 'state of mass media today' questions at the king of schlock indie movies, to which Kaufman, not surprisingly, responds with more candid, detailed, politicized answers than the questions actually deserve, and - ever the showman - even indulges in a tacky 'lunch delivery' comedy bit with a staffer to liven up the proceedings. He also greets Buckle at the beginning of the film with his pants down, and Buckle barely reacts to it. You might chalk this up to fan jitters if Buckle wasn't so poorly prepared and disinterested for the rest of his own movie.

What could have be an animated conversation is largely just Kaufman expounding about things he's often discussed in interviews and documentaries before this one, and more since. The man's carny barker energy is limitless, yet Buckle barely engages with him and seems to be aiming his documentary at people with almost no familiarity with Kaufman - posting yellow-backed text screens with Wiki-grade historical factoids and padding the show with four or five classic Troma trailers in their entirety (!). The videographer has about as much knowledge of his subject as he assumes his audience will, the results doesn't break any new ground.

Get this doc for the animated, gregarious Lloyd Kaufman giving 110 per cent as always. Just don't expect his interviewer - and the film's maker - to reflect any level of enthusiasm back to him.

OCCUPY WALL STREET: WE ARE THE 99% - also known as THE 99%: OCCUPY EVERYWHERE, the title under which I signed out the Filmbuff DVD from my local library - would appear to be the 'other' 2013 documentary about the 'Occupy' movement, a disorganized but key protest in 2011 that pushed to the forefront of many issues (too many, according to some critics) that have since become ensconced in the national political discourse of not only the U.S. but many other developed countries around the globe.

The protest itself, at least as documented here by writer-producer-director Michael Perlman, comes off as glassy-eyed and naively idealistic, as much an "experience" of the sort that millennials are (then as now) so fond of turning everything they do into (via the same social media that spawned the New York gathering in the first place) as a movement with goals beyond what like-minded protesters were screaming for in decades past.

That's not entirely a bad thing as the United States has a long, rich, even complicated but altogether NECESSARY history of public protest, something still unheard of under the regimes in countries like China, but Perlman's doc runs barely over an hour, features only seven talking heads who are all allied with the cause (many of whom are allowed to gush excessively about how the event itself made them all warm and fuzzy about mankind), and offers only minimal context in which to place the event itself, as if the filmmaker figured future viewers would automatically be familiar. I am, but I'm sure others might not be, which is where the OTHER 2013 'Occupy' documentary, 99%: THE OCCUPY WALL STREET COLLABORATIVE FILM handily takes the prize with its multiple directors, purposeful repurposing of mountains of readily available video, bigger and higher-profile selection of interview subjects - including some critical of the movement - and overall better sense of context.

Perlman's film feels unfinished, and indeed my DVD appears to be a 2017 release of a 2013 film about a 2011 event, to which a few paragraphs have been added (oddly) after the closing credits to outline how the demands of the movement, or at least the ongoing discussion of them, are now part of the cultural debate, albeit in an era where everything that 'Occupy' stood for has pretty much been sidelined temporarily while the Donald Trump circus freak show wheezes toward it's inevitable, criminal demise.

Among Perlman's talking heads are three young people, presumably millennials, one grandmother and one retired NYPD cop who all participated in the event, as well as economist Jeffrey Sachs and - most damningly for the project in retrospect - entertainment mogul and celebrity activist (and sorta-kinda 1%-er) Russell Simmons, whose world came crashing down in a litany of sexual assault and harassment allegations right around the time this film was seemingly being dumped on DVD and presumably streaming channels. It would be interesting to know if Perlman smelled what was coming and decided to just get the thing out there and let it be damned or forgotten, or more realistically in hindsight, both.

Camerawork by cinematographer Tal Atzmon is an asset, with a consistent feel to the lighting and framing of interview subjects regardless of setting. I'm surprised he hasn't had a busier career since this was made, but it's delayed release undoubtedly didn't help.

It's appalling enough that IMDb -- ostensibly a MOVIE database -- allows anything from YouTube (and other streaming sites) to have pages on the site, but that's the world we live in, where invariably young people who don't want to get real jobs -- or just don't have them yet -- drink the YT Kool-aid and figure they'll "explode" by "creating" make-up tutorials (just like everybody else), prank videos (just like everybody else), reaction videos (just like everybody else), how-to videos (just like everybody else), video game cheats/playthroughs (just like everybody else) and, at the very bottom of this now galactic-sized sludge pile that is YouTube "original content", mash-ups and comps that take the ACTUAL audio and visual creations (and IP) of LEGITIMATELY talented people and lazily squash them together into deliberately incoherent, tiresomely referential streams-of-consciousness that provide evidence no real skill, lead to ZERO success for the kids who "create" them, and entertain only the similarly addle-minded. Worst of all, this is nothing new; young, bored teens and twenty-somethings were demonstrating their "amazing" bizarre yet associative video and audio editing skills back in the days of VHS TAPE! And just like today's whizzes, reality stepped in and they had to get real jobs.

Not only has modern software rendered it possible -- albeit totally pointless -- for literally ANYONE to make these irksome, indistinguishable and repetitive videos, it's made it possible to do so even faster, and finally YouTube has made it possible for more people from more corners of the world to upload an unending supply of this derivative, time-wasting junk in an era where YouTube's own metrics all but guarantee that NO ONE (thankfully!) is going to make enough money or have enough success to make a living from the site beyond the less-than-one-per-cent of "talent" who were able to develop their cults-of-personality" in the site's early years. and now struggle to maintain upload schedules for their increasingly desperate, irrelevant crap without burning out (which is par for the course now that there's virtually NOTHING NEW at this creative bargain-basement level, and no new "YouTube" stars to be minted). "Hey guys", game over. If you're still making useless content like this, it's time to take stock of your life, and ask why you're not achieving anything of consequence in mom and dad's basement.

Thankfully, YouTube's algorithms are making this kind of "content" a thing of the past, along with many "old school" (LOL) vloggers and "stars" who long ago realized they were forever trapped within YouTube's wasteland, and big business and Hollywood were not knocking down their doors. There's just no point for the next generation to even bother making stuff; it's all be done, especially the kind of material that qualifies as YTP. Trying to do it now results in views in the low double to triple figures, which is a hopeful sign for the future!

Within the next generation, the "old" YouTube -- along with most of the biggest social media sites -- will be looked back upon as a long-lived but ultimately failed fad that, unlike so many before it, brought out the absolute worst in humanity, and very little of the best. And among the most forgotten material if offered the world will be YTP.

"It's almost as if we had an unconscious desire to see the biblical prophesies fulfilled," frets narrator Orson Welles in this classic piece of Christian fearmongering. Quietly insane evangelical minister Hal Lindsay attempts to marry revelation to then-current affairs in an effort to prepare us for the armageddon that lies just around the corner. Obviously, with 25 years of hindsight, we now know he was wrong, and continues to be wrong, but had really swingin' fashion sense circa 1976.

Many actual scientists and deep thinkers appear on screen in LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, and you'd be forgiven if you felt that some of them (who are clearly talking along evolutionary lines) were being taken out of context to support Lindsay's crackpot theories. Lindsay's apocalypse is scotch-taped together out of all the Bad News that was available at the time of production. Thus, Lindsay's world was set to end as a result of any number of nasty afflictions. Recombinant DNA! Brazilian killer bees! Viruses from Hell! Atheists and witches run amok! Dogs and cats living together! And finally, as Orson says, "Nucular" Holocaust. It's Hal's nauseating belief that if you don't have hardcore Christian faith, then your ONLY possible options are witchcraft, astrology, transcendental meditation, Hare Krishnas or the Rev. Sun Myung-moon's wacky Reunification Church! In any case, Hal sez you haven't got a prayer.

As always, Hal saves the best for last, enlightening us as to the coming of the antichrist, a figure he believes is alive today (at least as of 1976), and who would achieve omnipotence through seemingly good deeds and the establishment of world peace before enslaving everyone with microchip implants supplied by the then-fledgling computer industry. Or something. Apparently, only those who heed Hal's book and movie can avoid falling under the spell of this evil maniac. He then proceeds to illustrate his argument with imagery designed to stoke the usual cold-war paranoia: before or around 1982, sez Hal, Russia and China will invade the middle east (didn't happen), the European market will grow to a prophesied ten member nations (25 and counting and still no armageddon), and the "nucular" bombs will rain from the skies like the falling stars seen by the biblical John on his island retreat (well, we're still waiting!). Nonetheless, this allows the filmmakers to go mad with stock footage, a delirious and depressing exercise in escalating doom that runs a full six minutes, unnarrated. Oh, the humanity!

Just because Christians love to fulfill prophesies, or see fulfilment where none rationally exists, doesn't mean the prophets were right. It just means that we'll always have to live with people like Hal, desperate to prove their "faith" has substance rather than just keeping it to themselves, and actually learning from it.

80's pop music "trendsetters" Spandau Ballet -- an arguable term if you look at their limited supply of #1 hits and garish taste in stage fashion versus the street clothing the world around them is seen wearing in archive footage featured herein -- are given bog standard rock doc treatment in SOUL BOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, an overlong, not particularly revelatory and utterly TV-worthy "behind-the-music-but-not-too-deep"-style documentary about the self-possessed members of the group. Their stereotypical ascent to international stardom from blue collar roots during particularly tumultuous times in Britain, their handful of hit songs, eventual breakup, largely-forgotten court battle and successful 2009 reunion are covered via extensive vintage clips and painfully canned voice-over from the band members (so rehearsed-sounding, in fact, that a writer should probably have been credited), but the whole thing is soft-pedaled to the degree that it becomes obvious the subjects are participating largely to drum up interest in yet another reunion circa the film's release in 2014. Professionally assembled by director George Hencken, a producer on several little-seen documentaries by Julian Temple, this show will undoubtedly delight now-middle aged fans, but others may be less enthralled, as the finished product -- perhaps unintentionally -- sketches these chaps as no less superficial than most pop acts of their ilk, and just as full of themselves.

As I write this (July 26, 2017), there are 14 user reviews on this documentary by the following people:

"Justin Anderson", "Shane Flint", "janepeterse", "David Trotter", "Isaac Landry", "Sean Rivera", "kaylifsutl", "Elisabeth James", "Christopher Ortezo", "jsscmrgndvs", "Mandy Ford", "Amanda Nasc", "Monica Summer", "mabarry-69560"

I placed their names in quotations because I'm convinced they're all non-existent entities. ALL of these "users" have submitted "reviews" for some combination of a VERY small batch of independent films and documentaries and nothing more: Good Fortune, Danger Close, Chief Zabu, Imperfections, Urban Hymn, Founders, Granny of the Dead, Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies, 1 Night and Walk of Fame. End of list. MOST of their reviews are approximately the same length, because the smaller number of real people writing them -- much as with ALL fake reviews all across the web -- are paid by the word. The writing style employed on several of them are so similar as to be the work of one person.

All of these "authors" give these film 9- or 10-star IMDb ratings, which in turn prompts readers who smell a scam to place retaliatory reviews, much like this one, to try and "balance" the deceptively high scores given to the films in question. While I actively encourage that practice, I DON'T encourage throwing up disingenuous 1-star ratings because that's just as detrimental to the casual IMDb surfer as the gushing 10-star reviews. I rated Good Fortune a 6, because I HONESTLY believe that's what it deserves; it's a well-made hagiography, cut and dried, and since it's theatrical run was limited largely to festival dates, the producers or the studio that eventually acquired it rather obviously sought out resources to boost it's profile on IMDb and parent company Amazon (where many of these exact same "users" deposited the exact same reviews while having no other product reviews to their names), as well as other sites I'm sure. Obviously, SOME viewers would indeed rate this particular film much higher than I did, others will honestly rate it much lower, but the fact that ALL the reviews on the film so far have toed virtually the exact same line, in addition to the staggeringly obvious clues to their manufactured nature as noted above not only does a disservice to the film and its makers — even if they WERE privy to the scheme — but also to IMDb's already shaky trustworthiness in this regard.

Surely if the IMDb can shutter the forums that helped make them the global community experience they always wanted to be because of inappropriate behavioour, they can likewise start filtering out fake, misleading and oftentimes paid-for reviews.

Until then, this particular movie remains worth seeing, but in no way worthy of such high praise.

Revered French filmmaker Patrice Leconte attempts to craft a wordless documentary in the vein of Koyannisqatsi but generally misses the boat, its visual artistry hampered by a vague, simplistic "message". Had this been made by Cambodian filmmakers, I might be obliged to think differently, as undoubtedly they would have, too. Granted, it's full of pretty imagery (mostly of poor people, of course) and a sweeping (though inappropriately leading) tragi-operatic score by a massive European orchestra with choir seen on screen at regular intervals, most inappropriately at the end. There's a French subheading/tagline for the film that translates directly to "Open Your Eyes" which indicates that -- in spite of defenders who think the film deserves a more exalted reputation because of its music and imagery alone, or those who see no editorializing going on -- Leconte clearly WAS trying to make a "statement" with this film, a la such broader-canvassed productions as the aforementioned Koyannisqatsi, Baraka or Chronos. But where the directors of those films made that message one part of a larger commentary on our crazy world, and usually contrasted it with imagery of bustling, technology-choked metropolises and the like, Leconte seems to have thought that a vanilla travelogue of seemingly random yet very carefully selected scenes of lower-class, rural Cambodian malaise and ennui (read: people staring into the distance not realizing they're being filmed) set to an emotionally-charged choral musical backdrop would be enough to "open the eyes" of his audience to how the have-nots of East Asia really live. Instead, his show comes off like the work of a (typically white-privileged) 20-something millennial Social Justice Warrior whose sense of righteousness and predictable reverence for all things East Asian is not matched by a well-informed understanding of his host country and what sets him apart from the unwitting people he's essentially exploiting for profit. Apart from pictorially, DOGORA doesn't seem like the work of an accomplished auteur like Leconte. It's a tourist video with an "epic" soundtrack -- by the noticeably all-white Bulgarian State Orchestra -- layered in to "open your eyes" to its rather shallow, ill-defined "message": that the indifferent, often bored-looking faces of rural and small-town Cambodians going about their day-to-day lives are actually the face of a people locked in some kind of eternal struggle that the filmmaker doesn't actually identify.

The concept of director Greg McLean and producer/writer James Gunn's THE BELKO EXPERIMENT won't seem overly original to those who've seen BATTLE ROYALE or really any movie in which people are forced to hunt or kill folks they know and like, but in Gunn's hands it's a whole lot more fun: office workers for a Bogota-based non-profit are trapped in their shiny office tower and told by a mysterious intercom voice that they've got to murder a certain number of their own before a pre-determined deadline or double that number will be killed via the company's "alternate method". To prove the seriousness of the situation, several employees' heads are suddenly ripped open by a mysterious force. After several attempts at teamwork to devise methods of contacting the outside world result in even more bodies as punishment, some of the (literally) more mercenary members of the management team decide that the voice sort of has a point, and set about liberating several handguns from a downstairs vault, not long after other sluggos have raided the cafeteria of its sharpest utensils.

Not surprisingly, Gunn's script establishes a firm balance between action, horror and organic comedy -- bother Sean gets some of the biggest laughs as the corporation's resident stoner and conspiracy theorist, who leads his own little squadron of three for much of the film -- and he and McLean have assembled a such a strong, fan-friendly cast of familiar heavies (Michael Rooker! Tony Goldwyn! Gregg Henry! John C. McGinley!), lesser-knowns and newcomers to play this likable, believable group of office drones that they're able to smartly subvert expectations on a number of occasions.

The body count is extremely high -- most of them on screen -- and the blood and gore is plentiful and extremely well-crafted, but it wisely isn't lingered on and there's no off-putting, drawn-out torture scenes to speak of. Mind you, a few of the most audience-pleasing kills are exceptionally squishy, so I could see this eventually hitting DVD and streaming in R and unrated versions. The TIFF audience saw the unrated version for sure last night, so plenty of cheers all around when some of the most devious players met their makers.

This is a great "what would you do" kind of show, and I'd imagine a lot of genre fans will get a huge kick out of it.

On route to a pre-G8 summit meeting, the U.S. president's plane is brought down by a seeming act of terrorism into the dense, mountainous Finnish Lapland, played here by the German Alps much like Norway substituted for Finland in writer-director Jalmari Helander's debut feature RARE EXPORTS. Ejected to safety by his right-hand secret service agent (Ray Stevenson) before the crash, the president (Samuel L. Jackson) finds his only hope of escaping the mountains and forest is a 13-year old boy (Onni Tommila, the star of RARE EXPORTS) undergoing his first solo hunt as a rite-of-passage into manhood. The boy, we're shown, doesn't share his father's legendary skill for hunting—his talent with a bow and arrow tending to land shots well short of their targets—but when it becomes apparent that the president is being stalked, MOST DANGEROUS GAME style, by a team of slick big game hunters led by a Saudi psychopath (Mehmet Kurtulus) who has paid an exorbitant sum of money for the privilege of stuffing and mounting his prize, the duo must both learn that being tough is equally as crucial as looking tough.

Meanwhile, back at Pentagon HQ bunker, the vice president (Victor Garber), his aide (Felicity Huffman), a top general (Ted Levine) and an intelligence expert (Jim Broadbent) pound their fists, actually shout lines like "Dear GOD!", order in Chinese take-out, analyze a wall of gigantic satellite monitors and generally deliver Helander's shallow, wholly-derivative and often groan-inducing dialogue with as much professional aplomb as they can muster. With actors like these, all of whom Helander was no doubt able to attract on the charming eccentricity of RARE EXPORTS, audiences bring a lot of subconscious baggage to the table when watching them on deliver mostly and unnecessarily expository dialogue, having seen them play countless similar roles over the years, in effect filling in the blanks left by the writer. Without them, or with lesser actors or, say, Finns playing Americans, the film wouldn't have gotten too deep into the festival circuit (where it's currently making the rounds as I write this), or even a DVD/stream release outside of Europe or the Nordic countries, as the primary selling features would be limited to its spectacular visuals, an epic score, and the unique flavour of the indigenous cast. There are plenty of Nordic movies like that already, and they're largely unknown in North America.

Speaking of blanks, there are some big ones in Big Game, including a clearer understanding of the conspiracy that's actually taking place. With straight-up terrorism ruled out very early in the show, and the Chinese-armed Mid-Eastern hunters revealed to be in league with an "inside man", it comes as no real surprise that the two halves of the story—the action in the forest and the hand-wringing at the pentagon—will reveal additional villainy afoot (predictably, that's exactly what happens). But when Kurtulus, at long last moving in for the kill on Jackson aboard a sunken Air Force One after much shooting of guns, detonating of explosives, pursuits by helicopters and, at one point, a perilous and logic-defying ride in an airborne-then-waterborne refrigerator (don't ask), suddenly announces that he's on actually on the president's side (!), but answers Jackson's query of how with an exhausted "It's a long story. Maybe later." before resuming his attempt to kill him, it only confirms that Helander hasn't really thought the story through beyond characters and dialogue he purloined from other, superior works. That this exchange is quickly followed by Jackson's trailer-ready, baddie-dispatching quip for the ages proves that Helander is more about hitting the right beats and deploying the expected clichés than shaping character or filling in story, or addressing potentially interesting political subtexts inherent in the situation he created.

Make no mistake. This is clearly an amped-up calling card to Hollywood in the wake of the goodwill engendered by his enjoyably quirky RARE EXPORTS. I doubt it will get much theatrical play outside major markets. It will probably do alright on DVD and streaming (the "home formats", as the pros will say), and its high gloss production value should surprise the unsuspecting renter and be enough to attach Helander and DP Mika Orasmaa to a bigger American or international production for their next show(s), which is clearly something they're aiming for based on the evidence assembled here.

BIG GAME is very well crafted on what was undoubtedly a small budget compared to its American antecedents, with Helander and Orasmaa backgrounding nearly every frame with majestic mountain scenery, big skies, craggy surfaces and lush forestation, and Juri and Miska Seppa's sweeping orchestral score matching those visuals on every level, almost to a fault. The film's plentiful digital effects, including the crash of Air Force One and a climactic confrontation in the sky between ejector seat-bound Jackson and Tommilla and a helicopter riding villain, are all seamlessly integrated even as they routinely defy physics or common sense. But these are beautiful visuals tethered to an undernourished B-movie screenplay. I suppose some will claim that's part of it's charm — and it's certainly never boring as a result — but that's just excusing the fact that Helander should've had someone with a better ear for English dialogue and a better understanding of how the more successful of the American action pictures and 1980's Spielberg productions he idolizes here actually work, perhaps by doing more technical research than just appropriating their surface gloss for inspiration.

Pseudo-gonzo horror-comedy isn't quite up to the bar set by last year's truly gonzo BIO- ZOMBIE, but does earn at least a couple of stripes for thinking outside the box in which Hong Kong genre outings have of late become increasingly confined. One the eve of its closure—indeed, on the eve of the millennium—the motley staff of an alluringly tattered old picture palace, tellingly located at 666 King's Road, must face off with a collection of delightfully, deliberately rinky-dink monsters unleashed by Satan (Francis Ng), who's grown tired of poor films and inattentive theatre owners and decides to put this little microcosm of oddballs to the test! Leading the charge, after dishy girlfriend Sherming Yiu is unpleasantly dispatched by the demon, is sheepish projectionist Simon Loui, jittery, goggle-eyed ticket vendor Wayne Lai (in a terrific performance) and sassy cop Pauline Suen. Meanwhile, chasing a turd monster (!) down the toilets in the upstairs washrooms are stoned rave punks Benny Chan, Angela Tong and Pinky Cheung. While allusions are frequently and rather obviously drawn to Lamberto Bava's DEMONS (1985) because of the locale and the trio of punks, the film's primary mainspring is very likely Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE (aka BRAINDEAD, 1992), from the emphatically saccharine romance between Simon and Sherming, to the squishy, rubbery, puppet-y quality of the shoestring special effects, to the blatant editing cheats that prolong some setpieces a bit beyond their sell-by date. To be sure, it's no DEAD ALIVE, but its makers have their hearts in the right place, and if their low-fi ingenuity won't stand up to careful appraisal, it isn't really meant to anyway: it's meant to wink at the audience along with the cast and crew, who clearly enjoyed being given free run of a theatre for a few days to craft something just a little bit...different.