Boasting even more resilience than the underdog sports movie, the "man-child-into-adult" romantic dramedy may be the world's most enduring and unchangeable formula. Despite being a male drifting somewhat aimlessly toward thirty myself, there are few sub-genres I'd be happier to see retired from cinema forever than romantic dramedies about protagonists fitting that very description. Not Suitable For Children is a perfect subject for discussion, as it indicates how impossible it is to inject even an ounce of spontaneity or invention into one of these movies.

Today's manchild is Jonah (Ryan Kwanten), who lives with his friends Stevie (Sarah Snook) and Gus (Ryan Corr), in a house bequeathed to him by a relative. There, he and Gus throw massive house parties each weekend with popular DJs, earning money on door fees. Jonah's also trying to cover up his lingering feelings for Ava (Bojana Novakovic)...Read the entire review

Before the wide adoption of DVD and Blu-Ray, it seemed like there was a sense that other countries were making much better movies than America. A Run Lola Run here, an Oldboy there, and suddenly foreign film became a movie-geek magnet. Of course, this was just an illusion provided by the "cream of the crop" selection that the US was getting; these days, with smaller distributors bringing over the B- and C-grade material, it's clear that other countries produce as many forgettable movies as we do. To that end, we have Bangkok Revenge the newest in a long line of Thai action films still trying to capitalize on the success of Ong-Bak nearly ten years ago.

When he was only a few years old, Manit witnessed the death of his parents at the hands of corrupt police officers. His father, a noble cop, was in the dangerous process of trying to weed out the rats in his departme...Read the entire review

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A little magic comes to 1920s Beijing in the person of Chang Hsien, an illusionist who has traveled the world and sacrificed his heart in the process. Chang is The Great Magician, played with old-style Hollywood charm by Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love, Lust, Caution). Director Derek Yee (Shinjuku Incident) is purposely paying homage to the golden age of moviemaking, going so far as to include a Japanese film crew looking to bring the movies to China as part of his story. The period piece depicts a time when people believed in the possibility of magic, including the magic of celluloid, as going to the movies was not yet common enough that the...Read the entire review

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Not many people may recognize the name Takashi Shimizu in American households these days, but to reacquaint those who may remember the name, he was one of the names at the front of the Japanese (or J) Horror film genre in the early 2000s with his Ju-On films in Japan. He remade the films for American audiences, used Sarah Michelle Gellar as the star and used the alternate title of The Grudge, which met decent popular success here. He has returned to Japan to make films for that more recognizable audience, with the latest being the 3D film Tormented, the second film he has shot in such a format (the first being Shock Labyrinth).

Shimizu not only directed, but...Read the entire review

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Please Note: The stills used here are taken from promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

It's rare to find a film as sincere and assured in its emotional intent as Ann Hui's celebrated A Simple Life. The 2012 Chinese award-winner is disarming in its lack of affectation, and Hui, along with writers Susan Chan and Yan-lam Lee, stir emotions without an over-reliance on maudlin sentimentality or easy nostalgia. Plenty of heartstrings are tugged, but they are more like the wires of a finely tuned piano than the tin-can strings of the cheeseball ukele we expect most "feel good" films to be. One can only clear the tears from one's eyes and quietly applaud such a marvelous effort.

A Simple LifeRead the entire review

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Please Note: The stills used here are taken from promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

Choderlos de Laclos first published the novel Les liaisons dangereurses, a story of sexual intrigue and the wicked games of the French upper classes, in 1782. It has been adapted to stage, television, and cinema multiple times, perhaps most famously as the 1988 Stephen Frears film, Dangerous Liaisons, which used Christopher Hampton's stageplay as its starting point. It was a pretty great film. My friends and I were obsessed with it back in high school. The recent Chinese/Korean co-production of a film version of the same name does...Read the entire review

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The parody movie genre has taken a real beating over the last decade thanks in no small part to the efforts of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. After offering up a few laughs as writers of the first few entries of the Scary Movie franchise, they went on to bigger (but not better) things by co-writing and co-directing some of the most painfully unfunny excuses for comedy that I've ever witnessed (Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans...I'm looking at you).

It may seem unfair to drag Friedberg and Seltzer into any discussion of Supernatural Activity since they had nothing to do with this movie. However, a glance at the film's tagline 'From none of the creators of Scary Movie' shows that director Derek Lee Nixon and writer Andrew Pozza are comfortable with the comparison, the assumption being that their low-budget comedy is superior to Friedberg and ...Read the entire review

Note: The pictures included in this review are not taken from the Blu-Ray and should not be considered representative of the picture quality on the disc itself.

Before anyone accuses me of not having a sense of humor, I have seen and enjoyed seen gonzo Japanese comedies before. In particular, I had a great time with Yūdai Yamaguchi's Battlefield Baseball, which combined a sharp eye for the cliches it was spoofing and a wicked sense of timing. However, I was thoroughly defeated by Karate-Robo Zaborgar, a flimsy, tin-eared, monotonous cacophony of lunacy that never displays the slightest bit of nuance or wit for all of its non-sequitur logic. The idea that any nutty thing that pops into director /...Read the entire review

The title character of Cherry Bomb is an exotic dancer (played by Julin Jean) at a club whose name I can't repeat here. The movie gets to its main point pretty early- Cherry is hired to entertain a room full of guys who end up raping her and she ends up in the hospital from it. She finds out that basically nothing has been done to convict those responsible, so she escapes from the hospital as soon as she can and calls on her brother Brandon (John Rodriquez) to help her bring them to justice her way- by acquiring a supply of guns and hunting them down. Although Brandon asks her to think about what she's doing, he still helps her out. Once the bad guys figure out what she's doing, they enlist a large hitman named Bull (Allen Hackley) to take out Cherry and h...Read the entire review

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Korean anthology film Doomsday Book is a cautionary tale about the dangers of technological dependence and human fragility. Directors Jee-woon Kim (I Saw the Devil) and Pil-sung Yim (Hansel and Gretel) create three separate, tonally unique stories that relate in broad themes only. Doomsday Book is an interesting experimen...Read the entire review

It doesn't take much to make a martial arts movie. First of all (as exhaustively documented by Badass Digest's FILM CRIT HULK), good action should tell a story, establish clear geography, tone, and suspense. In addition, my measure of the muster of a good action scene, particularly martial arts scenes, is that I like speed and intensity: I want to feel the hits, and I want them to fly so fast my head spins a little just trying to keep up. Kill 'Em All eventually turns into a decent (if entirely basic) martial arts picture, but it gets off on the wrong foot by betraying almost all of these points -- the first half of the film is a long, slow crawl toward interest and engagement in a bunch of characters we don't really know fighting for reasons the f...Read the entire review

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The story of Legendary Amazons is fairly straightforward, I believe. All of the men of the Yang Clan are killed in battle and their women, from the youngest to the oldest, must take up arms and seek revenge against the armies that killed their men. It's also got a political edge, because they must also seek vengeance against the official who let it happen. Ya gotta love political meddling.

The prior synopsis is also a subdivision of the main plot, which has the warrior Zongbao (Richie Chen) being struck down in battle, word reaching his wife and clan, and their 18 year old son, Wenguang (Xiao Ming Yu) taking up the role of leader. He must now lead the women into battle, and does so with his mother in tow, Mu Guiying (Cecilia Cheung). Guiying was Zongbao's wife, so she's definitely in for some bloodletting on the battlefield. Make no mistake - Wenguang really isn't leadi...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Courier is a tired thriller, filled with tired actors playing tired characters, wrapped up in a tired story. There is exactly one scene in the movie where anyone looks like they're making an effort, and it's the only scene in the movie that's memorable or interesting. Although all of the top-billed cast and crew are veterans, the film is one of those worst-case scenarios where everyone involved seems to have signed on hoping to make a quick buck without thinking or trying too hard, and all of that apathy and malaise is plainly visible on the screen.

First up is Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who strikes me as a great choice for a DTV action movie; he's got a distinctly different persona than JCVD, Seagal, Kilmer, Willis, or whoever else is slumming it in Buglaria, and he's certainly charismatic and engaging enough to carry something like this (The Losers being a perfect example in principle a...Read the entire review

The Movie

High school comedies have always been a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was glad to be able to check this out. General Education concerns Levi Miller(Chris Sheffield), who finds out during the last week of school that he has failed science class and won't be graduating. His dad (Larry Miller) already has a scholarship lined up for him, so Levi pulls some strings to appear at his graduation ceremony anyways so his family won't know anything went wrong. After a couple failed attempts to cheat at changing his grade, he resorts to re-taking his science class at summer school (where the teacher is played by Elaine Hendrix and is generally unpleasant towards her students) without his parents finding out.

Although I found General Education entertaining en...Read the entire review

The Movie:

White Vengeance, in the promotional materials, states that it's part of the 'Red Cliff' saga, but at a much earlier point in that time line. Whether it references the John Woo's Red Cliff or the historical one is up for debate. What White Vengeance does is pit to friends up against each other all over the love of a woman. Well, if it were only that easy. These warrior leaders are actually friends who fight alongside one another, but are then pitted against one another by a different warlord who also wants power. The female love interest is thrown in there to add insult o injury.

I'm going to try to simplify this review as much as possible, because just thinking about it gives me a headache. The main battle in White Vengeance is that of 'Feast at Hong Gate' and the film is set during the fall of China's Qin Dynasty. Liu Bang (Leon Lai) and Xian...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Director David Blair's drama Best Laid Plans is anchored by Danny, a small-time hood and addict who cares for a mentally disabled adult. Danny racks up debt to a local gangster that he is unable to pay back, and coaxes his gentle friend into fighting for cash. Best Laid Plans is not the fighting actioner its cover artwork suggests, but a thoughtful British drama with imperfect characters living on the fringe of society. Stephen Graham of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" gives drunken Danny a deep-rooted despair, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is compelling even without much dialogue as child-like Joseph.

Very lightly inspired by John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Best Laid Plans pairs mentally disabled Joseph with knock-arou...Read the entire review

Although I admired Dante Lam's previous action/thriller The Stool Pigeon, it wasn't a "fun" film to watch, entangling its characters in a punishing web of lies and violence. The Viral Factor also strives to blend its action elements with a weighty, emotional thriller, but it does so without as much oppressive darkness, finding drama in the interaction of its characters rather than "cruel world" inevitability, and featuring a number of impressive action sequences that benefit from the added investment.

Jon Man (Jay Chou) is a police officer whose life abruptly changes when an operation to escort a criminal scientist and his family into police custody goes horribly wrong. Not only is Jon's wife, a fellow officer, killed in the chaos, but Jon ends up with a bullet in his brain that will kill him in two wee...Read the entire review

Call it culture shock, but I was totally unprepared for the off-the-wall zaniness of Butterfly and Sword (mysteriously and nonsensically retitled Butterfly Swords for this new US release). A look at Wikipedia kinda maybe suggests that this blend of brutal violence, slapstick humor, and light-hearted soap opera has its roots in Shaw Brothers movies, but since I haven't seen any of those, I can't say for sure. What I can say is that despite a confusing plot, mishandled action sequences, and its tendency to make me want to yell "what?!" in disbelief at some mind-boggling directorial decision, Butterfly and Sword is pretty entertaining, intentionally or unintentionally.

Meng Sing Wan (Tony Leung), Lady Ko (Michelle Yeoh), and Yip Cheung (Donnie Yen) have been friends since they were very young, graduating from petty thievery and beating up other children to work as full-on mer...Read the entire review

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If you want to see incredible vehicular mayhem and tensely choreographed shootouts, then Wind Blast may be the film for you. If you would like to give half a damn about the people being chased and shot at...well, you may want to look elsewhere. While populated with some eye-catching set pieces, that all too familiar hollow feeling of watching an exercise in style over substance quickly takes hold and never lets go.

The story is fairly simple since it just involves 3 groups of people who take turns chasing each other across the Gobi Desert for a variety of reasons. First up, we have Zhang Ning (Xia Yu) and his pregnant girlfriend Sun Jing (Charlie Young). Zhang is a small-time crook turned assassin who is trying to make a quick getaway after his latest hit. Standing in his way is our second group, a set of dedicated cops: Leopard (Duan Yihong), Shepherd (Wu Jing), ...Read the entire review

It's hard to believe that money was the only thing that drove Takashi Shimizu to direct six Grudge films (the two original Japanese TV films, the two Japanese theatrical remakes, and the first two American remakes, plus the video game). Making the same two films over and over has got to be increasingly tedious, no matter how big the paycheck. Then again, if his passion really is the genre, or ghost stories, or making films, there's no evidence of it in Shock Labyrinth 3D. Sloppy and frequently confusing, this is one of those movies that was made because it could be made -- "well, we can shoot it in 3D and get the director of The Grudge," said a studio exec -- not because anyone seems to have been invested in seeing it to the screen.

Childhood friends Ken (Y ya Yagira), Motoki (Ryo Katsuji), Rin (Ai Maeda), and Miyu (Erina Mizuno) haven't seen one another in a decade, but their te...Read the entire review

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Please Note: The images used here are promotional and are not taken from the Blu-ray under review.

There's no getting around the fact that P. David Ebersole's Hit So Hard, a documentary on Patty Schemel, former drummer for the band Hole, is inherently going to have very different levels of appeal based on factors unrelated to how good and interesting the film is (and this film is quite good and very interesting): markers of generation and taste will play a stronger-than-usual part in one's interest. It's not as if Hole was The Beatles or Bob Dylan; they were one of the more divisive avatars of an already-divisive 1990s "alternative" rock sweepstakes, with once and future Hole founder/frontwoman Courtney Love undo...Read the entire review

Okay, so in the first minute and a half of Mutant Girls Squad, this happens:

[click on the thumbnail to enlarge]

The Movie:

Let the Bullets Fly is the latest film in what I like to call "Asian Steampunk," but less so. The film takes place in the 1920's, but you wouldn't know due to their being lots of horses, people wearing traditional garb mixed in with everyone packing nice looking Luger pistols. There are gangsters and there are noblemen mixed in there for good measure, too.

As I mentioned, it's the 1920's (1919 actually) and we've got the unsavory Governor and his entourage crossing a mountain pass when, bandits ambush their train. Everyone is dead, with the exception of the counselor (Ge You) and the Governor's widow (Carina Lau). The leader of the bandit clan is named Pocky Zhang (Jiang Wen) and will now assume the identity of the Governor and the counselor will now be his counselor. I hope I got that right, because that subtle nuisance (or major plot point, take your pick) is the cata...Read the entire review