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Tape worm isaac12/20/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Yen stars as Qiao Feng, an orphan raised by a couple in the Song Empire. It’s a wuxia story based on a famous novel with the tough-sounding title Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils by Jin Yong. SAKRA is Donnie Yen’s 2023 passion project, which he stars in and co-directed (with Kam Ka-Wai, second assistant director of IP MAN 1 and 2). And instead of going home and being made to pray to Jesus, she secretly practices witchcraft. In her case it’s her dad (Chris Sigurdson) who’s still around, and he’s a sleazy, molesty drunk. She’s a shy, awkward girl, is mercilessly bullied by the (cartoonishly obnoxious) popular kids, and isn’t helped by a crushingly miserable home life with a terrible single parent. Tamara is, as described in the IMDb plot summary, “an unattractive girl who is picked on by her peers,” and it plays like kind of a CARRIE ripoff for a while. The part that piqued my curiosity is that the title character is played by former Janet Jackson backup dancer Jenna Dewan a year before she starred in the first STEP UP movie. I recognized the cover from the video store, but only when I found it on Tubi did I wonder what its deal was and click on it. Apparently it had an unprofitable theatrical release in 2005, a time of terrible fonts and faux-distressed poster art. Its hook is that it’s from Jeffrey Reddick, writer of FINAL DESTINATION. TAMARA may or may not be obscure enough to qualify for Slasher Search, but it’s harder to define now that I’m doing 21st century movies. For those times when you’re in more of a splattering blood and smashing cars mood than a creation of the atom bomb one it’s a joyful and enriching way to spend an afternoon or evening. But it offers two very different movies, plus short subjects in the form of fake trailers and bumpers, that play off each other kind of like an anthology. I know online movie people talk too much about runtimes, sort of a dumb topic usually, but I want to point out that this full double feature is only 15 minutes longer than THE BATMAN, 10 minutes longer than OPPENHEIMER, and 15 minutes shorter than KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. Turns out it was still unopened.ĭEATH PROOF definitely stands up as a separate movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed having that full experience again. I saw it twice during its short theatrical run in 2007, saw the longer separate version of DEATH PROOF on DVD (can’t remember if I ever did the same for PLANET TERROR), at some point I bought a Canadian import blu-ray just to have the full double feature when it wasn’t available here yet. The day after I saw THANKSGIVING I decided to sit down and watch the whole GRINDHOUSE double feature for the first time in many years. We’ll just say it’s more of an interesting film that I’m excited to write about than a great John Woo film. And there’s another catch, which I will get to soon. Instead it’s a skilled and slightly eccentric but not emotionally complex take on a standard vigilante revenge formula. It is not, however, a poetic story of brotherhood like A BETTER TOMORROW, BULLET IN THE HEAD or THE KILLER, nor an American genre pushed to gorgeous levels of absurdity like HARD TARGET, BLACKJACK or FACE/OFF. It’s also a Christmas-set action movie, which I always appreciate, and it has a gimmicky storytelling conceit (no dialogue) that makes it a fun formal challenge for the grandmaster. It’s been six years since his last movie ( MANHUNT, 2017) and twenty since his last American movie ( PAYCHECK, 2003), so it’s an event. If you didn’t read it or hear it, you could probly sense it. I don’t need to tell any of you that one of the all time great directors, John Woo, has returned to our screens. ![]()
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