Archive for August, 2009
Samurai Resurrection
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In the 17th century, a Christian revolt against the strict government comes to a horrific end, with the revolt leader, Shiro Amakusa, being beheaded for his part in the uprising. Later, Shiro becomes resurrected as a demon, who seeks vengeance for his death! He finds help from the executed adulteress Lady Hosokawa, and with a supernatural force of samurai and ninjas, Shiro leads the peasant charge against the government!
The Objective 2009
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A decade after “The Blair Witch Project” successfully dissuaded many would-be campers from venturing out into the woods, one of its co-creators is back with a similarly unsettling descent into the unknown. In the supernatural thriller The Objective, writer-director Daniel Myrick locates the action in a remote mountain region of Afghanistan, where a team of US Special Ops forces is dispatched with the ostensible orders of locating an influential Muslim cleric. While on the mission they find themselves lost in a Middle Eastern ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of ancient evil and faced with an enemy that none of them could have imagined.
Casshern
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In a world with an alternate history, a great war finally comes to an end leaving the earth diseased and polluted. The geneticist Dr. Azuma vies for support from the government for his neo-cell treatment that he claims can rejuvenate the body and regenerate humankind. The government leaders, guarding their own deeply entrenched powers, turn down the professor. Driven to complete his work, Dr. Azuma accepts a secret offer from a sinister faction of the powerful military. After an incident occurs in Dr. Azuma’s lab, a race of mutant humans known as the Shinzo Ningen are unleashed upon the world. Now only the warrior known as Casshern, reincarnated with an invincible body, stands between the Shinzo Ningen and a world on the brink of annihilation.
Anna In Kung Fu Land
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Anna in Kungfu-land is more marketing packaging for Hong Kong’s popstar-obsessed audiences - and frankly, it shows. A high-concept action-comedy, Anna stars Princess of the Box Office Miriam Yeung as Anna, a Chinese-Japanese martial arts master who competes in a Hong Kong fighting tourney. Ekin Cheng is PR guy Ken, who puts the whole shebang together to impress the sponsors. He also acts smarmy, weak, and generally does nothing which is sympathetic or even likable. Plus there’s some remarkably uninteresting fighting, much of it special effects-enhanced in unimaginative ways. All told, this isn’t a very good movie. The saving grace of this production: it pairs Ekin Cheng and Miriam Yeung on the big screen. From a marketing standpoint, that’s solid gold (or brass, maybe). But the movie itself: bio-degradable plastic.
Gun Crazy: A Woman from Nowhere
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CJ7
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Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle? director returns to the helm for this sci-fi comedy about a struggling single father whose quest to find the perfect toy yields out-of-this-world results. Ti (Chow) is a poor construction worker who breaks his back to ensure that his young son Dicky? can stay enrolled in an exclusive private school. But while Ti does everything possible to give his son the opportunities that he never had, Dicky still feels like a classroom reject due to his tattered clothes and lack of the latest toys. Dicky’s classmates all play with the coolest and most expensive gadgets that money can buy, so how is a kid who gets his toys from the local junkyard ever supposed to fit in? One day, while scrounging through the trash heap in search of a new toy, Ti discovers a mysterious orb and brings it straight back to Dicky. Though at first the “CJ7″ appears to be little more than an unidentifiable oddity, it proves to be much, much more once the young boy starts to play with it. This isn’t your average action figure, but a living “pet” with extraordinary powers. Realizing that his new toy may be just the thing to help him fit in with his demanding classmates, Dicky brings the CJ7 to school with him in order to show it off and have some fun. But the CJ7 has its own ideas about how to have fun, and it isn’t long before the situation at school gets hopelessly out of hand.
Typhoon
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The year 2005 turned out to be somewhat of a rejuvenation after the comparatively weak offerings of 2004. Although Korean films did not win any major awards from top-ranked festivals in 2005, as they had the previous year, the films themselves provided a much broader range of quality. From large commercial releases to low-budget digital films, from action films to romantic comedies, there was more or less something for everyone in 2005, and audiences responded with strong interest and support.