Meet the newer, more soulful Buffy: “Blood: the Last Vampire”

Blood: The Last Vampire gives you what the title promises. There is blood. There is a vampire. Possibly the last one. And there is martial arts and demons and swords and wire-fu. Vampire-hunting has been done to death in recent years. Beginning with the awesome Buffy TV series and moving on to the increasingly turgid Blade movies, and then those interminable Underworld movies. Add to that the various and sundry Buffy knockoffs and vampire hunting is about as novel in TV and movies as tracking down serial killers. So you’d be forgiven for being skeptical going into B:tLV. I certainly was. But the movie still manages to charm. Yes, there are big-teethed demons, and flappy-winged monsters, and The Big Bad Parent Monster. There is wire-fu, and katana swordplay, and numerous, numerous dismemberings. There’s really nothing here you haven’t seen before, and yet it still feels different enough to be a lot of fun.

Ghosts, Angels, and Nang Mai: Understanding “Nymph”

So, I was talking with Jaidee, my underling and faithful companion—the Kato to my Green Hornet, if you will—and we came upon the subject of spirituality and the role of the supernatural in Thai culture. Well, sorta. It came up like this.

J: “So, you go the camera show this weekend? There many sexy girls there.”

Me: “Yeah, then I saw that movie Nang Mai.”

And that’s how I put some of Nang Mai in cultural context.

Fourth of July in Siam, cameras, lingerie, and Thai movies: “Wongkamlao” and “Nymph”

One of the benefits of celebrating the Fourth of July in a foreign country (one with actual diversions and not a postage stamp in the middle of the desert, like last year) is that you get the days off, but don’t have to deal with the usual Fourth of July headaches: cookouts populated by weird family members you’d rather not spend time with, the annual bloodsport of fighting for a patch of land to watch the fireworks, the list goes on. I mean, I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but part of freedom and independence is the freedom from having to put up with cousin zippy from mom’s side boasting about his new position as deputy chief accountant at the Usinger’s plant. So this year, I headed out to Central World mall, where as fortune would have it, they were hosting a camera expo/lingerie show. Excellent! What better way to celebrate America’s birth than by watching lovely Thai women in lingerie strike Sapphic poses in the middle of a family mall. If this isn’t what our forefathers fought the Revolutionary War for, well…they sure would have. Unfortunately, you can only ogle the pretty girls for so long before the sex-tourist vibe sets in. So, I decided to book some time at the Cineplex. Public Enemies hasn’t yet opened in Thailand, and Transformers is blowing everything else out of theaters, so I saw a couple Thai movies instead. Yes, this whole paragraph was a long-winded way of telling you I’m going to review some Thai movies. But isn’t the pic from the camera expo awesome?

Now I claim your sun! “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

If you’ve read my review of the first Transformers movie, then you know that I didn’t love it. I thought it was loud, stupid, obnoxious, and not all that exciting. It was as if Michael Bay thought if he bludgeoned us with enough activity onscreen, he could convince us we were seeing a fun summer movie. A lot of people thought I was being too hard on what was meant to be a silly summer action movie about giant robots fighting. Kassandra the Work Wife brought up this point on several occasions, “Big robots whaling on each other. What more do you want? I don’t want to think too hard about a movie, Mr. I’m-All-Cool-Because-I-Use-My-Higher-Brain-Functions. Just eat your damn popcorn and enjoy Optimus Prime stomping Deceptacon ass, Mr. Thinkee.” The problem I have with this argument is that the classic summer movie’s that we’ve come to love were well-made­ pieces of disposable entertainment. We still recall and love them precisely because they were so well-made. Transformers was not. Quick, tell me your favorite line or scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator 2, Escape from New York, or Die Hard. Okay, now tell me your favorite line or scene from Transformers (and none of that “One will rise; one will fall” bullshit. That was on the poster). Right, I didn’t think so. Well, the bad news is that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is everything the original was and much, much  more. If the first one was a cinematic pummeling, this one is the Bataan Death March.

REPOST: “Transformers”

In, uh…anticipation seems like the wrong word… preparation for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, I’m reposting my review of the original Transformers , uploaded July 5, 2007.

“Before time began there was The Cube…”

Uh-oh.

Yet this opening voiceover was but the latest evidence that Transformers the movie and anything associated with it is simply bad, wrong, and possibly evil. Others include the Transformers logo bumper stickers that grown men have begun affixing to their cars, the chat room arguments that the robots in the movie lack the depth of personality present in the cartoon series of the mid-‘80s, and the fact that GM—a once-mighty American corporation—is using this movie to hawk their cars the way McDonalds uses Shrek to sell green milkshakes.

Attack of the cheap knock-offs: “War(s) of the Worlds” and “The Day the Earth Stopped”

So apparently while you’ve all been sipping your lattes and surfing the Internet, a small production company called The Asylum (they of the classic MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus) has been making direct-to-DVD knockoffs of Hollywood blockbusters, and C. Thomas Howell has been carving out a nice empire of his own within this genre. I knew about some of these films, and I even caught Howell in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds when it was released to compete with Spielberg’s version. I simply assumed he was an innocent bystander caught up in all this dreck—just some poor former Brat-Packer who needed money to keep his ‘97 Saturn running. I never would have imagined he was evil genius starring/directing/producing these cinematic daisycutters bombs. A sort of crap-movie Rommell if you will. Alas, there he is, foisting another War of the Worlds knockoff at us, along with The Day the Earth Stopped. I’m not going to go so far as to say that C. Thomas Howell is the devil, but I’m sure there’s a UN human rights tribunal with his name on it. Or at least there should be.

Strippers, boxers, and nude Martial Arts: “Fear City”

The 1984…um…thriller doesn’t quite seem like the right word…movie feels a lot like an old Miami Vice, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s directed by Abel Ferrera who directed a few influential episodes of Vice in its first season. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that he was as influential in establishing the feel of that show as Michael Mann. Unfortunately, where Mann brought a movie-quality budget, kinetic fusions of action, music, and style, and a sunbleached noir attitude, Ferrara brought chintz, neon, and all the restrained sleaze a network TV show could show on a Friday night back then (i.e. not that much). Any time you watch an episode of Miami Vice (and, really, there’s no reason not to) and you think, ‘hey, that coked-out ingénue looks like she was filmed in a portrait studio under a neon lightbar they bought at Spenser Gifts for five bucks,’ that’s Abel Ferrera’s influence. Ferrera’s good at bringing sleaze to the screen, and good at getting actors to give batshit-crazy performances that delight antisocial 17 year-old boys, but if you can watch The King of New York or The Bad Lieutenant and see something that remotely resembles a real human being, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Criminally Overlooked: “The International”

Tom Tykwer’s The International was dumped into American movie theaters in the movie doldrums of February, billed as a dank, international thriller about a murderous bank, and released at time when the financial sector’s self-immolation had thrown us into the worst recession in living memory. No wonder people skipped it and saw My Bloody Valentine instead. It’s too bad, because The International has  a lot to recommend, not the least of which is its view of international finance which uses the dark arts of money and debt to grow fat. Just as The Dark Knight may one day be used a lesson of what America went through in the wake of 9/11, The International may one day serve as a useful autopsy of what brought us to this point in our financial history.

Be nice to gypsies: “Drag Me To Hell”

I saw Sam Raimi’s terrific Drag Me to Hell under what must certainly be the ideal circumstances to see such a movie. That is, sitting beside three Thai girls who couldn’t have been older than fifteen. I call these circumstances ideal, because everytime something scary happened, they would scream in unison and then collapse on each other in a giggling chattering mass, before slowly returning their gaze to the screen. I’m pretty sure that’s the effect Raimi was going for.

Extremely Artificial Intelligence: “Terminator Salvation”

Going into a Terminator movie made without James Cameron or Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lot like going home with a Thai prostitute you met on the corner of a back soi when you’re very drunk. You have no idea what you’re in for when she takes her clothes off, but you can be sure that you’re probably going to be unpleasantly surprised, and regardless, you will have to pay for the experience. And that’s more of less what Terminator Salvation delivers. No, not transsexual Asian prostitutes, but a lot of disappointment that you pay to see.