The Machine Girl (2008)

Directed by: Noboru Iguchi
Starring: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Nobuhiro Nishimura, Honoka, Kentaro Shimazu, Ryousuke Kawamura

(out of 4)

Wow, don’t I feel inadequate!

About 13 minutes in to Noboru Iguchi’s Kataude mashin gâru (from here on referred to as The Machine Girl), teenage yakuza/ninja in training Sho (Nobuhiro Nishimura) is made to drink his father’s (Kentaro Shimazu) blood, which flows from dad’s wrist to son’s mouth in copious amounts of crimson, to “strengthen their bond”. Of course, by this time, we’ve already seen our heroine Ami Hyuga (a cute and tough Minase Yashiro in her first acting role) take revenge on multiple teen yakuza bullies by blasting them to pieces with a machine gun attached to the stump where her arm used to be.

The Machine Girl is full of flying limbs, decapitated heads, chopped fingers, and spurting blood so plentiful that in some scenes it sprays the camera lens - just one of the few homages to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead  movies (the giveaway is the arm-machine-gun attachment, which in 2008 generates comparisons to Rodriguez’ Planet Terror, but when I see souped-up ass-kicker Ami dispatch multiple assholes in gory fashion, it seems to me like she’s a certain reincarnation of Bruce Campbell’s Ash). And like Ash, who was a mild mannered S-Mart employee turned unwanted hero, so too, is Ami: originally non-violent, shunned by her community for crimes her parents didn’t commit, wrongfully called a murderer, and having her brother Yu (Ryôsuke Kawamura) killed by Sho’s gang, she is finally driven to ironically fulfill the role assigned to her.

Oh my God! They’ve killed Kenny! You Bastards!

Later on, when physically tortured by Sho’s family, which includes the completely insane dragon lady mom (Honoka - another AV actress hottie who would be at home in a Tarantino flick), Ami begins her physical transformation into monster/instrument of revenge. But by that time, her psyche has already started the journey. Speaking of Tarantino, comparisons between Ami and Uma Thurman’s bride from the Kill Bill movies is not off the mark. Even the beginning title sequence seems ripped from Tarantino, who of course gets his inspiration from 70s grindhouse cinema. So it’s the east stealing from the west stealing from the east, and around and around we go!

Let’s be honest here - this movie isn’t for the kids. While it’s true that the film is done up like a live action anime (the music sounds like it comes straight out of Dragonball Z; the camera likes to pan right to left over a character’s face, just like in anime), and much of the gore is delivered over the top with humorous intent (think Riki-Oh, or maybe early Peter Jackson splatter like Bad Taste and Dead-Alive), it’s still pretty harsh stuff. Ami spraying blood from a headless victim into the face of the victim’s dad may be funny for the sheer balls of it, but seriously, damn. What about the poor chef forced to eat sushi made from his own fingers or the mother and son who have the tops of their heads sliced off and exchanged? I think you get the idea.

Not bad, but needs more soy and wasabi

Then again, bubbling up through all the pools of blood is this concept of that blood’s capacity to bond a family together. Whether someone is good or evil, they always have parents who love them, right? The strong ties between Ami and her brother, Sho and his parents, Takeshi and his parents Suguru and Miki, take center stage. For example, the ninja squad sent to kill Ami and Miki (Japanese model Asami - also hot) are, of course, slaughtered in gory fashion. The grieving parents are then recruited into the “Super Mourner Gang” to get revenge. (They all wear pictures of their slain sons on their chest, while occasionally shouting out their kids names). Iguchi is interested in exploring themes of revenge begetting revenge, and of blood feuds, and of the bonds between parents and children. That is, when he’s not aiming geysers of blood at us.

The performances, especially from the female leads, are energetic which matches director Iguchi’s hyper kinetic visual style of filming. It’s Honoka’s evil babe Mamma Hattori that steals the show, however - her character is completely off the deep end - I mean, her weapon of choice is a drill bra. That’s right, a drill bra.

Comes from the Victoria’s Secret in Akihabara

The Machine Girl is surreal, gory, offensive, funny, outrageous, twisted, and absolutely, positively Japanese.

- Bill G

Resident Evil - Apocalypse (2004)

Director: Alexander Witt

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Sophie Vavasseur, Razaaq Adoti, Matthew G. Taylor

Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson

1/2 (out of 4)

Here’s my multipass, bitch!

Straight from the lower levels of Hollywood hell comes “director” and “writer” Paul W.S. Anderson - another member of the idiot club that includes Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Stephen Sommers, and Ewe Boll. What better representation of the damaging effects of the MTV culture than his Resident Evil movies? Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the second film in the trilogy and it makes the first film look like a masterpiece. And believe me, the first film was no picnic. This time around, however, Anderson assigns himself screenwriting duties only and gives the director’s chair to second unit man Alexander Witt. It didn’t help.

(more…)

Fear Dot Com (2002)

Directed by: William Malone

Starring: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier

(out of 4)

disappointed in the American Idol finale

fear dot com is the kind of horror movie that is 75% derivative and 25% wasted potential. There are scenes that stand out for their striking nightmarish quality, but these are scenes that belong in a better film. Stephen Dorff plays a cop who is on the trail of a serial killer who taunts him with occasional letters. There is no real fleshing out of the backstory involving the relationship between cop and killer, but no matter.. the bulk of the movie concerns a website which kills the viewer 48 hours after accessing it. Apparently, the unfortunate surfer ends up dying from his/her greatest fear, but even this plot point seems underused and glossed over - one can imagine fabulous death sequences involving one’s worst fears, but, with the exception of one clever sequence where a computer expert dies from a multiple onslaught of bugs (get it?), I suppose we’ll have to make due with the Elm Street movies.

Shoulda ran the GNU Debugger

It seems that the director decided to throw bits of other films into the mix, and stir them around, hoping for a brand new concoction; there are elements of old silent horror movies, bits of Videodrome, Strangeland, Seven, and even some of the anime series Lain. Yes, of course, the movie is a total ripoff of the Japanese film Ringu (no coincidence that this movie and The Ring were made around the same time in 2002). In addition, the technological side of this killer-web-site scenario is barely touched upon - why, for instance, is there no attempt to track down the source of the fear.com website? (Does anybody know how to do a traceroute anymore?) The philosophical undertones of the film are reduced in importance to throwaway ramblings by our serial killer (”We will provide a lesson that reducing relationships to an anonymous electronic impulse is a perversion”), and abandoned in the end to a simple track-down-the-killer horror film. While there are interesting elements scattered through fear dot com, the end result is not worth the download time - if you’re looking for a movie about a virus-in-the-wired, try The Ring, Ringu, Lain, or Ghost in the Shell; if you want merging-of-the-virtual-and-reality, see Videodrome; if you want a good noirish serial-killer movie, go with Seven.

- Bill Gordon

lonelygirl15 gets out of hand

Videodrome (1983)

Director: David Cronenberg

Starring: James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits

(out of 4)

I had a brain tumor. And I had visions. I believe the visions caused the tumor, and not the reverse. I could feel the visions coalesce, and become flesh… uncontrollable flesh. And when they removed the tumor, it was called Videodrome.

Futures… made of… virtual insanity

My favorite of all Cronenberg movies, Videodrome is a mesmerizing experience, not unlike the kind of hallucinations suffered by its antihero. A horror movie, and at the same time an essay on the ability of video and television to create new worlds - to shape the minds exposed to their signals, the film is fascinating in its depiction of a society’s coming evolution (devolution?) brought on by technological changes instead of natural ones.

James Woods plays Max Renn, owner of a small Canadian public television station with a fondness for the “next big thing” in broadcasting - most notably, sex and violence. Hooking up with a radio talk show host (Harry) with a fondness for kinky S&M, he soon comes across via pirated signal a strange broadcast called Videodrome, which depicts nothing but torture and murder - Snuff TV. But Videodrome is not what it appears to be, and soon Max begins to suffer hallucinations that get increasingly more bizarre the longer he is exposed to the show’s signal. “It has a philosophy” says Max’s friend Masha (Lynne Gorman), “and that’s what makes it dangerous.”

Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s high

Once again, Cronenberg shows off his fondness for body mutation (Max develops a vaginal-like slit in his belly, suitable for hiding things like pistols) and biological/technological symbiosis (Max’s gun merges with his hand, massive doses of Videodrome’s signal result in the creation of a brain tumor/organ) but he goes the other way too- infusing technology with biological properties (like Bill Lee’s living typewriters of Naked Lunch, Max’s Beta cassettes pulsate and breathe). There is also discussion on the nature of reality (another Cronenberg staple, seen in Naked Lunch and Existenz), as the philosophy of Berkeley’s idealism is touched upon by the movie’s Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley - the movie’s Marshall McLuhan), who has died from Videodrome exposure but communicates from the dead via videotape:

A new outgrowth of the human brain will produce and control hallucination, to the point that it will change human reality. After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?

Pulls in more viewers than CSI

The film’s messages are thorny - Cronenberg seems to be taking the side of his detractors who bemoan him for the violence and sex in his movies. Does constant exposure to violence really change the viewer’s behavior patterns? Or does it simply render the viewer numb and susceptible to more dangerous suggestion? (The film’s villain Barry Convex, played by Leslie Carlson, refers to S&M as opening up certain receptors in the brain, allowing the signal to sink in, although we are told that Videodrome could be broadcast under a test pattern). I definitely noticed a kind of detachment to Woods’ performance, which seems intentional - as his condition progresses he becomes less the character of Max and more of a blank slate, stuck in receive mode. We don’t so much place ourselves in his position as we observe and follow him - to his inevitable destination as brainwashed assassin. Speaking of brainwashed, there’s a great sequence involving Brian O’Blivion’s “faith-based” ministry called “Cathode Ray Mission”, where the city’s homeless are herded into cubicles to watch television, to “patch them back into the worlds mixing board” as Bianca O’Blivion (Sonja Smits) says. Eerily prescient, despite Cronenberg’s assertions that he wasn’t trying to play prophet, and smart in its theological application of TV culture.

While the gore in the film is plentiful and impressive (still superior to most CGI garbage being thrown out today), it doesn’t function as the film’s raison d’être; it fits the movie’s hallucinatory tone. It also adds to the feeling of chaos and confusion - and like in the denouement where the “body” dies to give rise to the “new flesh”, we can never be sure that we are really seeing what we are seeing. But that’s part of Videodrome’s charm - it’s about a new way of seeing (”The eye is the window to the soul” as Barry Convex quotes da Vinci) and it ties to the rise of a new religion (the new flesh and its required death/rebirth). An entertaining and challenging film; I see no reason why 20 years from now it shouldn’t be just as timely as it is today, in the age of the Internet.

- Bill Gordon

homeboy got played!

The Criterion Collection does it again with the 2 disc DVD set in a case made up to look like a Betamax cassette, with 3 good written articles and two audio commentaries - one track by David Cronenberg and another track by James Woods and Debbie Harry. In 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the film has been digitally restored and looks great. My only complaint is the lack of Dolby Stereo, but I can at least run the mono track through simulated surround on my receiver. A really cool short called “Camera” is included (featuring Les Carlson again), and disc two has a new documentary, an audio interview with special effects maestro Rick Baker, the Samurai Dreams/Videodrome footage featured in the movie, trailers, and finally, a kick-ass roundtable discussion featuring Cronenberg, John Landis, and John Carpenter. This is an amazing release.