JFL

Unfortunately, Maniac Cop is a case of concept winning out over content. Or perhaps I just made a mistake in letting the film’s hype build up for too long. When the whole series was released on VHS in the nineties, the Video Plus website was decorated with attractive photos of ruthless, zombified cops, which burrowed deeply into my juvenile memory. But my parents’ unwillingness to purchase videos and the different genre preferences of my friends who had VHS players meant that I had to defer settling that debt from my youth until I reached a more advanced age. And how disappointed I was when I found out that Maniac Cop is actually just a completely mediocre trash flick in which the obvious inspiration from Terminator is mixed with the period fashion of living corpses and there placement in the most bizarre genre positions. Even the spectre of the fascist enforcer of state power that terrifies the people of New York turns out to be completely beyond the pale.

When seen from the perspective of today, when Tran Anh Hung’s filmography already includes five titles, his second film appears in a new context. If we can deduce any generalisation from the films that he has made so far, it is that Tran alternates escapist, charmingly intimate portraits of everyday life and the emotional fluctuations of ordinary characters with the bleak and destructive reflexes of contemporary society and its dark sides. The Scent of Green Papaya, interlaced with nature motifs and everyday rituals, resonates with The Vertical Ray of Sun and, in principle, with Norwegian Wood, whereas the urban filth and existential decadence of Cyclo find their power in the post-colonial epic I Come with the Rain. In Cyclo, Tran presents a picture of organised crime in contemporary Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), focusing on the way individuals take on personalities and emotions as their own in the given setting. The basis of the narrative has two parts, which complement each other like the two sides of the same coin. The main protagonist, a young cyclo (i.e. pedal-taxi driver) who is drawn into the world of crime against his will, in fact personifies the past of the emotionally dejected mobster played by Tony Leung, who represents the danger that the protagonist may encounter when operating on the edge of the law. Similarly, the protagonist’s fragile and innocent sister has her own opposite in the form of the gang leader. Tran seems to inadvertently suggest that the basis of a career in organised crime is to rid oneself of emotions, but people are essentially unable to do that. The gang leader clinging to her son, the hitman singing lullabies to his victims, the sensitive poet placed in the role of a heartless pimp and thug: all of them have emotions, but in their world, emotions are a weakness that can be fatal. The film thus becomes both a metaphorical and direct struggle for the soul of the protagonist, who alternately resists and gives in to this environment. Tran presents all of this in a visually gripping form that, however, does not slip into empty gestures. For example, he seems to incidentally look away Cycle from the violence and criminal practices, giving us a view from a window or across the edge of a roof in order to show us that everything we see is not in some fictional world, but literally right next to busy streets in the course of everyday life.

Though, strictly speaking, 28 Days Later should not be ranked among zombie movies, given that the origin of the apocalypse it depicts would rather place it among contagion films, it draws directly from the tradition of zombie-apocalypse movies on many levels. Furthermore, its international box-office success had a fundamental impact on the revitalisation of the zombie genre in the new millennium. The legacy of zombie movies in the Romero tradition is fully evident here, as the monsters and the apocalypse associated with them serve both as a catalyst for a drama involving a handful of survivors and as a mirror held up to contemporary society and its ills. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland focused specifically on the global phenomenon of rage, which they see – at least in England – as the result of frustration arising from unfulfilled ideals about the value and importance of the individual in a democratic society. The use of digital cameras highlights the immediate tension of the characters, while also serving as a reminder of the mass deployment of security cameras, which are intended to protect people, but only contribute to anxiety and the feeling of diminished privacy, as well as to rising fear in the population brought on by the released footage of criminal acts being committed.

This raunchy yet in no way unique French porn flick provides another variation on the classic formula involving the central character’s sexual awakening. In this case, it’s Brigitte Lahaie as a respectable woman with repressed desires who is constantly let down by the straps on her dress, thus revealing not only her body, but also her horniness. Precisely according to expectations, the narrative builds toward orgiastic group activities, but thanks to the numerous amusing details and inventive ideas, it superbly enhances the erotic potential of the individual scenes, so it doesn’t descend to the level of being a mere utilitarian means of linking the individual acts.

The only aspect of Haywire that dampens my enthusiasm after watching it is the fact that the very existence of Soderbergh’s film reminds me how much the action genre has been degraded in Hollywood and elsewhere over the past two decades. When an action thriller in which the main character is a woman who, however, does not have to balance her active role in the narrative and her physical dominance in the action scenes through stylisation into a fetishistic object, is made by a director who is said to combine commercial and artistic tendencies in his work and who is considered to be unique in the contemporary film industry, it is more than an alarming message about the current norm against which the given film is defined. Gone are the days when action B-movies were seemingly made on an assembly line in Hong Kong, momentarily making minor stars out of female athletes and stuntwomen (Yukari Oshima, Michiko Nishiwaki, Cynthia Rothrock), and where a condition for achieving stardom was not only good looks, but also physical fitness (Michelle Yeoh, Moon Lee and Cynthia Khan had undergone many years of dance training).  The main attractions of those films were the actresses’ physical fitness and their willingness to do all of the stunts themselves. Therefore, various attempts to revitalise or recall this production method in the new millennium teeming with digital effects and dainty models seem extremely counterproductive. The situation in Hollywood is even more dire. Though everybody will recall Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton, it is necessary to recognise that, outside of James Cameron’s iconic films, they didn’t get cast as action heroines anywhere else. Contemporary action films feature model-thin actresses like Milla Jovovich, while stronger, physically fit actresses, athletes and stuntwomen (e.g. Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Bell) are relegated to supporting roles or “honorary” cameo roles. Gender-based interpretations can hardly be avoided when action heroines can exist only if they simultaneously allow themselves to be dominated by the male gaze as fetishised objects. Haywire (and Soderbergh’s other two films based on the combination of a subject and a performer in a similar environment, The Girlfriend Experience and Magic Mike) clearly demonstrates how much can be added to a film when the action heroine is played by a woman who is truly physically capable and can actually handle all of the action scenes without the use of filmmaking illusions. At the same time, unfortunately, the film’s tepid reception also illustrated the extent to which today’s viewers are accustomed to the contemporary trend consisting in the immersive falsity of the chaotic style used in all current action blockbusters. What was inventive in The Bourne Supremacy unfortunately became a scourge that overwhelmed all contemporary production. The reasons for the proliferation of this style are clear at first glance: it enables films to give the impression of dynamic action while faking depth by engaging performers whose qualities are primarily related to acting, not physical ability (breaking movement down into a mass of miniature fragments so that even the most physically unfit actor can look like an action hero), as well as dramatic directors (action scenes today are allegedly shot mainly by the second unit; with the exception of Michael Bay, there are no A-list directors who specialise in action movies and have their own style). The action film has reached an absurd stage where the audience cannot appreciate the physical attractions that ruled the genre from the 1970s to the end of the millennium, but instead demands a chaotic mish-mash that evokes the impression of insanely dynamic action and money shots enhanced through camerawork and digital effects. Soderbergh points out the audience’s dependence on cinematic deception when, instead of creating chaos through editing and camerawork with raging music, he uses slow motion to show the grace and effectiveness of physical combat in extraordinarily long shots without music. Haywire thus stands apart not only from fake blockbusters, but also from B-movies that, in opposition to the mainstream, are built on the physical skills of the actors and contact action, but often excessively weigh that attraction down with ostentatious visual quirks. At first glance, Haywire seems like an ordinary film, but it is very sad that today it is in fact a completely exceptional work.

Grand Theft Auto meets The Expendables in the next instalment of the film franchise that came up with the concept of combining separate works into a grand team-oriented movie before the much ballyhooed Marvel franchise did it.

If it didn’t have "Directed by Sofia Coppola" in its credits, no one would have given this insipid docu-drama a second thought. The most bizarre aspect of The Bling Ring is its indecisiveness and lack of concept. The film obviously wants to be a major cautionary tale about the twisted values of the young, but it paradoxically gives the objects of its criticism exactly what they want – what could jaded, celebrity-idolising kids want more than a movie in which celebrities actually appear and, what’s more, they get played by Emma Watson?

Federico Zampaglione has gotten better. His previous film was tiresome bullshit, whereas this one is only unintentionally funny bullshit, thanks to its transparency. The first half of the film offers up a number of genre delights, when imaginatively bloody murders alternate with sequences involving nude bedroom activities. However, everything tragically falls apart as soon as the exposition settles down and the task of holding the audience’s attention is handed over to the screenplay, which should provide some sort for framework and story for the discharge of all kinds of bodily fluids. In the spirit of trailer syndrome, without any exposition or clear motivations, the characters find themselves in exceedingly affected situations that defy even the most primitive logic. The unravelling of the whole convulsively overwrought narrative is not only predictable far in advance, but also concluded in such a ridiculous way that it raises the bar for absolute screenwriting cluelessness to new heights. Perhaps the time has come to accept the fact that Zampaglione is indeed that self-styled continuator of the golden era of Italian horror, but only if that includes the genre’s dumbest and most desperate contributions. That he tries to flatter fans of the genre by thoroughly revitalising the characteristic elements of giallo is definitely not a mitigating circumstance.

A centuries-old master of the occult, whose longevity is due to a potion made from the blood of young people, lives on an island where he runs a renowned winery. He uses the bodies of his victims as a secret ingredient and fertiliser, but for whatever reason, the corpses rise from their shallow graves in his vineyard. Under the pretext of making a film about winemaking, he has invited to the island a group of novice actors exclusively comprising young hunks and pretty girls, along with an aspiring sommelier and her friends. Such a premise promises an epic trash spectacle, so it’s all the more surprising that the whole thing was evidently intended much more seriously and ambitiously that one would expect at first glance. The Vineyard is an original project by James Hong, who gained fame as a character actor in American films and television series, appearing in Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China and Chinatown, to name a few. It can be said that he spent his entire life playing stereotypical Asian characters and for some reason had the feeling that a horror B-movie would be the ideal project for demonstrating his acting skill and demolishing the stereotypical depiction of Asians in American films and series. Asians, specifically Chinese, in Hollywood productions are either all practitioners of the martial arts, with which they attempt to resolve every situation, or they are conversely depicted as old men whose defining characteristic is wisdom or, as the case may be, wickedness. Sex is never a consideration in their case, i.e. they are never shown in erotic situations. The Vineyard, however, features a bad guy played by Hong, who indulges in all earthly pleasures and for some reason adheres to Mayan occultism instead of Chinese philosophy. The group made up of his soon-to-be victims, who seem to be a parody of the central protagonists of Scooby Doo, includes a young man of Asian descent played by Michael Wong, who is surprisingly not a master of the martial arts, but rather a well-read journalist with huge glasses. In a certain respect, the film is a bizarrely subversive (or, said more precisely, tiresome) project because it denies viewers the attractions that are there for the taking (the walking dead don’t attack, the main Playmate actress and most of the other pretty girls don’t get naked), instead offering up a series of sequences that are supposed to show off Hong’s acting skill, wrapped up in an utterly twisted narrative.

A film about the love between a human and a vampire, and which celebrates chastity and passivity. Yeah, who would have thought that the Twilight franchise would have a precedent in the form of a fifteen-year-old Czech film directed by the guy whose contributions to Czech culture include Kamarád do deště, Discostory and the Major Meisner movies? The Vampire Wedding is a typical example of one strand of post-totalitarian cinema in the first half of the 1990s. Whereas under communism it was entirely common that Czech pop culture (especially music) piggy-backed on western titles, this plagiaristic tendency resulting from limited domestic distribution and censorship suddenly changed after the revolution, as filmmakers gained the ambition to make Czech contributions to foreign genres. In line with the mood at the time, filmmakers did not limit themselves to making mere copies, but instead came up with ostentatiously “Czech” variations on western formulas in an effort to be worldly and to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Czech film environment. Because there was no real tradition of horror in the Czech environment, at least not in Czech cinema, Soukup and co. proceeded based on Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, which was probably the first Slavic mark made on the Hollywood genre. As a proudly Czech project, The Vampire Wedding ostentatiously diverges from the vampire canon (garlic has no effect on Czech vampires and crucifixes aren’t much good either) and, in line with the rhetoric of the day, the advantages of the Czech environment are highlighted with the vehemence of a tour guide. Prague is thus presented as a city of alchemists and golems, though beer still remains its greatest virtue. At the same time, The Vampire Wedding is part of the period trend of transforming the image of communist-era stars for the new age. The film was thus evidently supposed to be a vehicle for television celebrity and singer Iveta Bartošová to break into the world of film as a portrayer of romantic roles, while the film was also intended to erase Rudolf Hrušínský’s image as a foppish teenager and enhance his status as a poster-boy idol for girls with the role of a charming and sensitive romantic hero. Nevertheless, the change didn’t take hold for either of them, making this film an even more bizarre phenomenon in their respective careers.