The Lost Jungle (1934)

While a feature-film reworking of a serial is nothing unusual, this version of The Lost Jungle differs significantly from its 12-chapter counterpart in many respects. Most surprisingly, it includes long stretches of footage shot specifically for this production, entirely new in some cases or a restructuring of existing scenes in others, intercut with pieces of the original story—mostly Clyde Beatty’s “training” scenes. Here, Beatty and Ruth Robinson (Cecilia Parker) are in love at the outset, though his shyness with women and his focus on his animals means they aren’t getting to the point, much to the exasperation of Captain Robinson (Edward LeSaint). About to embark on an expedition with Professor Livingston (Crauford Kent), the Captain issues an ultimatum: either Beatty and Ruth get married immediately – as in RIGHT NOW, since he’s departing for “the South Seas” that afternoon (“I’m not leaving you in port unless you’re married!” he tells his daughter in an eyebrow-raising display of distrust) – or Ruth comes with him. Ruth’s umming and ahhing fails to convey any urgency to Beatty and she is carried off by her father. Here, Kamor is a “lost island”, not just a “buried city”; it is also “the cradle of civilisation” (!); the ship gets wrecked on it just the same. The professor sends an SOS by homing pigeon, prompting the International Institute of Science (a division of Generica, Inc.) to send a rescue dirigible (?): Beatty, PR man Larry Henderson (Sid Saylor) and the dangerously unstable Sharkey (Warner Richmond) hitch a ride and are the only survivors when it crashes—conveniently enough, on Kamor. From here, training scenes aside, The Lost Jungle jumps to an amusingly abrupt conclusion, the most amusing thing of all being – with the original 4-hour-ish running-time now a brisk 68 minutes – that the treasure-hunting plot is removed in its entirety: as honest an admission of how much of these low-budget serials were simply padding as you’re ever likely to come across.

(The new footage shot for The Lost Jungle also lands the film version over in Spinning Newspaper Injures Printer: Part 1 and Part 2.)

Kōchiyama Sōshun (1936)

Also known as: Priest Of Darkness. In the backstreets of Edo, Kaneko (Nakamura Kan’emon), a former samurai who turned ronin after being permanently injured, collects protection money from the local shopkeepers for yakuza boss Morita. However, Kaneko is attracted to Onami (Hara Setsuko), who supports herself and her feckless brother Hirotaro (Ichikawa Sensho) by selling sweet sake, and lets her off the hook; later making excuses when his boss notices the shortfall. Encountering Kitamura, a samurai from a nobleman’s household, an embarrassed Kaneko quickly leaves despite his former friend’s plea to drink with him. While Kitamura is distracted, Hirotaro steals a small ceremonial knife he has left unguarded and sells it. Using the false name “Nao”, Hirotaro spends his nights in the gambling den run by Kōchiyama Sōshun (Kawarasaki Chōjūrō). Celebrating a successful financial con, a drunken Kōchiyama invites Nao to a brothel where the young man encounters Omitsu (Kinugasa Junko), a childhood friend now a courtesan. Impulsively, he persuades her to run away with him… Kōchiyama Sōshun is one of only three surviving films by the director Yamanaka Sadao, whose groundbreaking career ended with his tragically premature death in 1938. The title character is based on a real historical figure from the Edo period, who after being dismissed from his position within the household of the Shogun turned rogue and became the head of a criminal gang. His exploits became the inspiration for many fictional tales, with the depictions ranging from outright gangster to a sort of Robin Hood figure. This particular example is loosely based upon a play by Kawatake Mokuami and employs many of the conventions of Kabuki, while Kawarasaki Chōjūrō was the head of Tokyo’s most successful contemporary Kabuki troupe. The multiple characters and subplots and sudden shifts in tone make serious demands upon the viewer (it has been suggested that at least some of the potential confusion stems from bits of missing footage). The subplot of the knife, which passes from person to person, finally being sold back to the desperate Kitamura as a fake copy of itself, is essentially comic; even the fact that, should he fail to find it, Kitamura will be expected to commit seppuku is basically treated as a joke. However, around this builds a plot of escalating tragedy focused upon Onami, the one genuinely honest and innocent person in this deceptive and crime-riddled environment, who becomes the victim of everyone else’s dishonesty and cupidity. The tipping-point is the bewilderingly abrupt suicide of Omitsu, which is presented almost as a throwaway detail (missing footage?), but which precipitates open warfare between the characters. When Morita demands compensation for the loss of his valuable “property”, Kōchiyama and Kaneko band together to try and protect Onami from the consequences of her brother’s actions. Onami is referred to throughout as “that child” and Hara Setsuke was only fifteen when she played her, which adds an extra layer of horror to the proceedings. While Hirotaro’s monstrous selfishness and stupidity trigger most of the trouble, it is the jealousy of Kōchiyama’s wife Oshizu (Yamagishi Shizue, real-life wife of Kawarasaki Chōjūrō) that sets the final phase of the tragedy in motion. The closing scene of Kōchiyama Sōshun, overtly ambiguous, is really not doubtful at all, merely extremely bitter. We should note that this film’s English-language title entirely misrepresents it: presumably it is a reference to Kōchiyama’s habit of facilitating his con-artistry by disguising himself as a monk, but it gives no hint of the self-sacrificing role he finally plays when the characters are forced to choose sides. Katō Daisuke, later a Kurosawa mainstay, made his film debut here as the repulsive Kenta.

Top Of The World (1955)

Slowing reflexes see Air Force jet-fighter pilot Major Lee Gannon (Dale Robertson) offered the choice between a desk job and reassignment to a weather-testing station in Alaska. While pondering his choices, Gannon receives a letter from his ex-wife returning his last several alimony cheques and informing him that she no longer needs – or wants – his financial support, as she has managed to open her own small nightclub in Fairbanks. He accepts his transfer… While being flown to Ladd Army Field, one engine on Gannon’s plane catches fire and he and the pilots are forced to bail out. Their SOS reaches Major Brad Cantrell (Frank Lovejoy), who scrambles a rescue Cessna and locates the three men. At Ladd, Gannon learns that a small unit is being selected for Operation Deep Freeze, intended to study the terrain and weather conditions in the extreme north. Meanwhile, evading the hopeful advances of the base’s PR officer, Lt Mary Ross (Nancy Gates), Cantrell goes into Fairbanks to visit the woman he is in love with, Virgie Rayne (Evelyn Keyes)—the former Mrs Gannon… Top Of The World is a fair aviation drama when it remembers to be an aviation drama, but is almost scuppered by the tedious love quadrangle at its centre and by Dale Robertson’s off-putting performance as the bitter Gannon. This is one of those exasperating films that will not let two parties to a failed relationship move on, and so despite Cantrell being in every possible way the more desirable partner, the screenplay has Virgie deciding for no reason at all – on the contrary – that she still loves Gannon, which in turn sees Cantrell risking his life to bring Gannon back to her when Operation Deep Freeze goes belly up. Meanwhile, though its Cold War elements are less prominent than in the other Alaskan-set dramas we have recently considered, Red Snow and Arctic Flight, preparedness is the name of the game here, with Gannon heading a handpicked team whose task is to acquire detailed knowledge of conditions in the far north in anticipation of a Soviet attack over the Pole. Settled on the unimaginatively named Ice Island – literally a floating shelf of ice – the men find themselves subjected to one of the worst storms ever recorded, with communications cut, their equipment destroyed and the ice beginning to break up, so that the landing of a conventional rescue plane is out of the question… The final search-and-rescue phase of Top Of The World almost salvages the rest of the film, though Cantrell’s resourceful and courage make us feel even worse for him. As with Island In The Sky, which in some ways this resembles, the aviation footage here was the work of William H. Clothier, while the location filming in Alaska includes material shot at the real Ladd Army Airfield and Baker Island Airfield. The supporting cast features Paul Fix, Robert Arthur, Russ Conway and William Schallert.

The Stalls Of Barchester (1971)

Inspired by the success of Whistle And I’ll Come To You, BBC writer-director Lawrence Gordon Clark created the anthology series A Ghost Story For Christmas, which saw a ghost story screened on the 24th December every year between 1971 – 1978. Based upon The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral, Clark’s adaptation of M. R. James’ short story from 1910 keeps but somewhat reworks the original text’s framing device. Scholar Dr Black (Clive Swift), while examining and cataloguing the contents of the cathedral museum, is given access to the diary of Archdeacon Haynes (Robert Hardy), who died under mysterious circumstances some fifty years before—at which time, it was locked away by order of the Dean. Kept by Haynes for many years, the diary recounts his appointment at Barchester as a hopeful, ambitious young churchman—and then his long, frustrated years of service under Archdeacon Pulteney (Harold Bennett), whose mismanagement of church affairs was gall to Haynes’ soul. Haynes got his chance at last when the elderly clergyman finally died in a fall down his own staircase; but having seized his longed-for appointment with both hands, the new Archdeacon began to be plagued by visions connected with the strange carvings on the wood of his cathedral stall… The Stalls Of Barchester is an effective if low-key horror story and one that requires some attention, with the double-layering effect of Black and the curator trying to interpret Haynes’ own interpretation of his experiences: to decide, in effect, whether the story told by the diary is one of supernatural visitation, of incipient insanity, or of a guilty conscience—or all three. Being James, this is also a very scholarly story, with folk-tale elements introduced in the form of the source of the wood from which the cathedral carvings were made. It does suffer somewhat from the need to show what Haynes was experiencing, but these moments are kept as subjective as possible to retain the desired ambiguity. The Stalls Of Barchester was filmed in and around Norwich Cathedral, which provides a suitably atmospheric backdrop for the possibly ghostly events.

(I assume that M. R. James’ co-opting of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester was to avoid identifying any real cathedral with his story’s dark elements; though making that story’s central character the Archdeacon can only have been intended as a meta-joke.)

Child’s Play (1972)

Based upon the play by Robert Marasco. Nine years after graduating from St Charles’, a Catholic boys’ boarding-school, Paul Reis (Beau Bridges) returns as a lay-teacher, taking over as gym master. He is delighted to meet his former English teacher, Joe Dobbs (Robert Preston), but less so to be reunited with Jerome Malley (James Mason), his old Latin teacher, who he finds no less harsh and unlikable than he did when he was a student. Reis learns that Malley, who has been teaching at the school for thirty years, was offered voluntary retirement on a full pension earlier that year but refused it. Dobbs and Malley are at loggerheads over the punishment of a student, Jennings (Bryant Fraser), who was caught writing obscenities on the latter’s blackboard: Dobbs pleads for leniency but Malley is adamant about his suspension. A dismayed Father Griffin (Charles White) comments on the recent escalation in disciplinary incidents amongst the students, including episodes of violence. Having already broken up one such incident, a horrified Reis is witness to a savage attack that leaves a boy in danger of losing an eye—despite which, Reis insists, he made no attempt to defend himself… Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Robert Marasco’s unexpected Broadway hit suffers from a number of the usual difficulties of translating a play to the screen, including giving in to the urge to make literal – to show – what should only have been suggested, and conversely toning down its less worldly elements. (The play, I gather, entertains the notion of demonic possession, which is merely a throwaway sarcasm here.) Consequently, Child’s Play has its virtues but is finally too grounded to be quite believable, particularly the nature and magnitude of the conspiracy at its heart. However, it does build a fair degree of uncomfortable tension as Paul Reis tries to discover where the truth lies between Malley and his spiralling paranoia and Dobbs with his passionate devotion to “his boys”. Almost as unpopular with his colleagues as with his students, Malley’s assertion that he is suffering harassment – graffiti in the classroom, obscene calls at home, fake subscriptions to questionable magazines (implied to be gay porn) – and that the campaign has been tacitly encouraged if not outright ordered by Dobbs with the goal of forcing him into retirement finds no belief within the school; and the increasing wildness of his accusations only alienates his colleagues the more. But – as the saying goes – being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you… Child’s Play is worth watching for the performance of James Mason who pulls off a remarkable transformation as Malley, from thoroughly despicable to sympathetic, even pitiful, victim. Robert Preston isn’t quite so convincing, though he has some excellent moments; and Beau Bridges does a fair job as audience stand-in Reis. In the supporting cast, David Rounds is memorable as would-be rebel priest Father Penny.

Man At The Top (1973)

John Braine’s novels about working-class anti-hero Joe Lampton and his tooth-and-nail fight to climb the business and social ladders became the films Room At The Top and Life At The Top (both with Laurence Harvey), before being spun off into the television series Man At The Top—which in turn gave rise to a movie spin-off also called Man At The Top. The opening phase of the film version is frankly confusing—apparently assuming that the viewer knows what’s going on from the series despite this adaptation junking many of its characters and altering the relationships between those remaining. So. Joe Lampton (Kenneth Haigh) is offered a position as managing director of the pharmaceuticals company headed by Lord Ackerman (Harry Andrews); he accepts, though this requires him to renege on other business commitments, much to his former partner’s disgust. Though recognising they can be useful to each other, Lampton and his new employers are antagonistic from the outset. Exposed to the class snobbery of Ackerman’s circle, Lampton responds by making a play for his wife, Alex (Nanette Newman). When his predecessor Harish Taranath (Jaron Yalton) publicly commits suicide, leaving his letter of resignation by way of explanation, Lampton begins to investigate and soon realises he is being set up as the fall guy for the company’s wrongdoing… Man At The Top is finally a rather unpleasant experience. It does function as an interesting snapshot of its era, being built upon an increasingly overt class war and punctuated with glimpses of the various social upheavals of the time including racial attitudes and the generation gap. The main problem here is that Kenneth Haigh is so completely charmless as Lampton that it is almost impossible to sympathise with him even when he is in the right; while the suggestion that he is some sort of irresistible ladies’ man is just flat-out insulting. Lampton finally discovers that the pharmaceutical company has been marketing a drug in Africa without fully testing it, with Taranath’s suicide following the revelation of its side-effects. The question then becomes whether Lampton will remain, to use his employer’s favourite term, “loyal”, or whether he will use the information to his own best advantage—or both… Man At The Top was a Hammer production, and does serve as a reminder that the studio did a lot of other things—and of why those things often aren’t remembered. The most interesting touch here is the appearance of soccer player turned stand-up comedian Charlie Williams – who as a person of colour broke barriers in both respects – as one half of a mixed-race couple and the father of a hitchhiker brought home by Lampton, with the two wary Northerners experiencing a rare moment of mutual understanding.

No Gold For A Dead Diver (1974)

Based upon the novel by “Heinz G. Konsalik” (Heinz Günther). Original title: Ein toter Taucher nimmt kein Gold (A Dead Diver Doesn’t Take Gold); also known as: Deadly Jaws. Peter Damms (Hans Hass Jr), Hans Faerber (Horst Janson) and Hans’ girlfriend Ellen (Monika Lundi) arrive in Mexico, where they are to meet a friend of Peter’s father who has come into possession of an old map revealing the site of a 16th century Spanish wreck, supposed to have been carrying a fortune in gold. They make an appointment but arrive to find that the elderly man has been stabbed. His muttered last words allow them to find the map, but they are seen doing so by René Chagrin (Marius Weyers) who orders his partner Pascale (Sandra Prinsloo) to follow them. At their hotel, the friends make inquiries about a dive-instructor, allowing Pascale to recommend Chagrin to them. Stressing the dangers involved in working with beginners, he manoeuvres the others into revealing the site of the wreck and inviting him to partner with them, to which he agrees—in exchange for 20% of anything recovered. Later, however, he makes it very clear to Pascale that he has no intention of sharing any treasure, and that his “partners” won’t be coming back… Okay. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t much care for treasure-hunting films. (Will I stop watching them? Of course not; see below.) An absence of sympathetic motives and therefore sympathetic characters is pretty standard in this area, and No Gold For A Dead Diver suffers from this more than most. It raises eyebrows at the outset with its revelation that “treasure-hunters” Peter and Hans (Ellen is just a tag-along) have arrived in Mexico without any actual plan for how to proceed: they don’t know how to dive, nor even, apparently, how to handle a boat. This leads them to put themselves entirely in the power of the patently untrustworthy Chagrin, meaning they deserve anything they get. The rest of the film has the characters bouncing back and forth between acting like proper collaborators and trying to kill each other, as the plot might momentarily demand. Despite its setting, No Gold For A Dead Diver was filmed in South Africa and in a good quality print the cinematography of Franz Xavier Lerdele would probably be its strongest point. On the other hand, the diving scenes are frequent and lengthy; while the dubbing of the most readily accessible print (the main characters are made English, Chagrin very French) is distracting rather than helpful. The post-Jaws retitling of the film is misleading: for one thing, it’s an octopus that gives the most trouble (so I guess it really should have been Deadly Beak); and while there are sharks around, they are never a major aspect / threat. It isn’t clear that either a real octopus or the shark Hans supposedly kills at one point were actually harmed, so there’s that; certainly, the film goes nowhere near the sickening lengths of Sharks’ Treasure. (Prefiguring The Deep there’s also a moray eel, but it doesn’t do anything.) The battle between the characters becomes a defensive alliance when local “pirates”, who have been hanging around waiting for the others to do the heavy treasure-lifting, finally make their move—leading to the agreeably absurd sight of Monika Lundi and Sandra Prinsloo wielding heavy ordnance while wearing skimpy bikinis. All of which sets up the kind of “ironic” ending that for treasure-hunting films seems inescapable.

True Confessions (1981)

Based upon the novel by John Gregory Dunne. In 1940s Los Angeles, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy (Robert DeNiro) performs a cathedral wedding service for the daughter of construction magnate Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning). Afterwards, the Monsignor evades Amsterdam’s effusive attentions while taking the opportunity to pump his lawyer, Dan Campion (Ed Flanders), over the true financial state of the construction business, with which the diocese is deeply involved. Meanwhile, Detective-Sergeant Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) is called to a flea-pit brothel run by Brenda Samuels (Rose Gregario), where a priest has died in the act. While Tom and his partner, Frank Crotty (Kenneth McMillan), take steps to cover the matter up, Brenda expresses her bitterness over a past stretch in jail, accusing Tom of leaving her to take the fall for their mutual transgressions while working for Amsterdam, and provoking him to an angry slap. Afterwards, Tom meets with his brother to assure him that everything has been kept quiet. The detective and his partner are then called to a desolate vacant lot where the grotesquely mutilated body of a young woman has been found… Despite its source, its adapters (author Dunne working with his wife, Joan Didion) and a high-powered cast, True Confessions is an oddly unsatisfactory drama, possibly because it seems uncertain in itself of exactly what kind of drama it wants to be. The screenplay tries to do a lot, but in the end it doesn’t do quite enough of anything, leaving each individual plot-thread hanging. It asks for trouble most overtly in its co-opting of the notorious “Black Dahlia” murder – was this the first pop-cultural reworking of the famous unsolved crime? – with the case used as a symbol of the endemic corruption of its time and place, most of its details fictionalised, and the solution offered literally a throw-away guaranteed to frustrate the crime-minded viewer. True Confessions strives for balance in its depiction of the contrasting Spellacy brothers, priest Desmond compromising himself while managing the Church’s finances even as cop Tom tries to wash his own hands clean; but it may have been a better film if it had kept its focus on Tom, whose growing determination to destroy Amsterdam – partly for righteous reasons, partly to exorcise the demons of his own corrupt past, and even if doing so engulfs his brother – is ultimately the driver of the narrative. The cutting between the two tends to dilute both stories rather than do what it was presumably intended to, create a whole greater than its parts. Still, there are some excellent scenes here—with perhaps the most memorable being, fittingly, that in which Amsterdam and Tom separately unload upon the Monsignor under the guise of taking confession. As an early neo-noir – the shadow of Chinatown hangs dark here – True Confessions does an excellent job invoking the milieu of the time and reminding the viewer of the ugly reality behind the white-picket-fence image of post-war America. It also succeeds in its depiction of the wide-ranging Catholic community, though much of what it has to say about the Church itself is deeply critical. At the time of the its release the critical focus was understandably upon the co-casting of “the two Roberts”, but the film also features Cyril Cusack as the Cardinal, Burgess Meredith as Desmond’s priest-mentor, Jeanette Nolan as the Spellacys’ mother, Dan Hedaya as a reporter, James Hong as the coroner, and the image of Missy Cleveland as victim Lois Fazenda, here dubbed “the Virgin Tramp”.

Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind (1984)

One thousand years after a catastrophe known as the Seven Days of Fire, the remaining human settlements are under constant threat from the Sea of Decay, a deadly jungle harbouring gigantic insects. After a year-long journey during which he found only the ruins of former communities, Lord Yupa returns to the Valley of the Wind, an agrarian society protected from the Sea of Decay by the barrier formed by its constant breezes. As he approaches the Valley, Lord Yupa is attacked by a gigantic arthropod called an Ohm and must be rescued by Nausicaä, daughter of the Valley’s ruler. A “wind-rider”, an expert on a small mechanised glider, Nausicaä divides her days between caring for the people of the Valley and trying to understand the Sea of Decay. As the two of them reunite, Nausicaä tells Yupa sadly that her father, Jihl, has been stricken by the jungle’s toxins. Jihl later begs Yupa to settle down and stay with his people, but the elderly blind woman, Obaba, mutters to Nausicaä that Yupa is destined to “search forever”—reminding her of the legend of a saviour in blue and a pure earth. The peace of the Valley is shattered when a huge transport plane loses control and crashes nearby. Nausicaä pulls a single survivor from the wreckage, a young girl in shackles, who with her dying breath begs that the plane’s cargo be destroyed… After technically making his debut directing Lupin III: The Castle Of Cagliostro, Miyazaki Hayao’s career proper began with this adaptation of the first two volumes of his own manga—with the film’s success also paving the way for the founding of Studio Ghibli. In terms of the themes that would inform most of his later works, in particular his pacifism and his deep concern for the environment, Miyazaki hit the ground running with Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind. The film’s opening suggests a wholly alien world, but the revelation soon comes that this is a post-apocalyptic Earth in which a natural world poisoned seemingly beyond repair by human activities is fighting back with poisons of its own in the form of spreading toxic spores. But even here the overriding threat remains the fragmented human population, with the residents of the Valley caught in the crossfire of warfare between the Tolmekians and the Pejite. The latter at first seem like “the good guys” inasmuch as they have suffered a devastating attack by the former; but there are no good guys in this war, with the Pejite motives and tactics no less ruthless than their enemy’s: both sides are fully prepared to sacrifice the Valley and its residents to their struggle. The mysterious plane cargo turns out to be an embryonic Giant Warrior, an undeveloped form of the huge, humanoid bio-weapons that caused the Seven Days of Fire. Having obtained it via a brutal attack upon the Pejite, Kushana, leader of the Tolmekians, plans to use the Giant Warrior to destroy the Sea of Decay—ignoring all warnings that such an attempt can only trigger another disaster… Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind gives itself away as a first film chiefly in its lack of subtlety. Its characters are done in broad strokes with nothing unexpected about them—though Nausicaä herself, a warrior without being a killer, a scientist by aspiration and a hearteningly practical and efficient princess at all times, is an often intriguing creation. The film also has a tendency to tell as well as show, and its themes are perhaps over-insistent—though you can’t really blame Miyazaki for shouting: no-one was listening then any more than they are now. At the same time, this is an astonishingly beautiful film, even in its scenes of violence and destruction. The shifting colour palette and the brilliantly evoked alien / not-alien world in which the events unfold make its points so clearly that the accompanying narrative feels even more overdone. The focus on the war and the wilful blindness of the combatants creates a sense of frustration—but intentionally, I think. I’m sure I’m not the only one who ever wanted to spend much longer in the Sea of Decay, amongst its gorgeous and creepy plants and animals, or to see more of Nausicaä’s secret botanical laboratory; and oh damn, I really want a baby Ohm…

A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)

Part One of the Jeffrey Lau / Stephen Chow adaptation of Wu Cheng’en’s Journey To The West ends with Joker (Stephen Chow) cast five hundred years into the past, where he encounters Zixia (Athena Chu). Part Two begins from Zixia’s point-of-view: along with her sister, she is the wick in Buddha’s oil lamp; but now she has fled from heaven without permission to seek her true love, who she will know when he is able to pull her sword from its sheath. She encounters Joker at the mouth of what – in the future – will be Spider Web Cave and calmly announces that everything there belongs to her—including him. To make her point, she takes from him Pandora’s Box, which he has been using in a desperate attempt to prevent the death of Jing-jing, and brands the sole of his foot with three dots. Remembering Spider Woman’s search for the dots and their significance, a dismayed Joker steels himself to look into his demon-revealing mirror—and sees himself as the Monkey King. Joker tries to persuade Zixia to give him back Pandora’s Box, but his mission is complicated first by her periodic possession by the sister with whom she has been feuding for centuries, and then by the revelation that he is able to pull Zixia’s sword from its sheath… In some respects, the second half of A Chinese Odyssey is much closer to its source than the first, with the characters of the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie / Pigsy (Ng Man-tat) and Sha Wujing / Sandy (called “Blindy” here; Johnnie Kong) appearing in their own right, and the return of Tang Sanzang / the Longevity Monk (Law Kar-ying) and King Bull (Lu Shuming). Overall, this film is more focused than the first, though I guess that’s a relative term given that almost everyone has a double identity and the plot involves endless body-swapping / possession / invasion; the wedding scene is particularly chaotic in this respect. It is also, I think, funnier; and while there is still plenty of Stephen Chow’s trademark schtick, much of the humour is more intrinsic and emanates from the characters’ situations; although it certainly requires the viewer to remember the events of Part One, which it repeatedly references. (Perhaps the best joke is the goddess Guanyin herself getting annoyed by the Longevity Monk’s endless stream of “wisdom”, which if we can cast our minds back that far was what triggered the Monkey King’s rebellion in the first place.) The surprise here is that, along with the humour, the film manages a reasonable amount of emotional depth as Joker struggles against accepting his destiny as the Monkey King, which will require him to relinquish all human desire. The film does stumble somewhat in its central love triangle: the drawing of the sword reveals Joker as Zixia’s true love, even while he fights to try and save Jing-jing; and we don’t feel his shift in emotional allegiance as we need to, particularly not in light of the film’s famous closing sequence—which still works rather beautifully, but could / should have been even stronger. Stephen Chow’s makeup is well-designed, distinguishing the Monkey King from Joker while allowing Chow’s personality to show through.

 Loch Ness (1996)

By Loch Ness, scientist Dr Abernathy (Phillip O’Brien) tries to take a photograph of something that looms up out of the dark waters, but slips on the rocks and is fatally injured… In New York, discredited cryptobiologist John Dempsey (Ted Dansen) is assigned to replace Abernathy by his boss, Dr Robert Mercer (Harris Yulin), and given orders to conclusively disprove the existence of the Loch Ness monster. Soured by career failures and personal struggles, Dempsey takes on the job in a spirit of bitter cynicism. Arriving at the loch, he finds the locals discouraging but finally secures a boat that he can fit with his equipment and a room at the inn run by Laura McFetridge (Joely Richardson). Dempsey goes out on the loch with his assistant Adrian Foote (James Frain), who is an enthusiastic believer. The two men scan the entire waters and find nothing: Foote is shattered, while Dempsey expresses angry satisfaction and prepares to leave Scotland. At the last moment he is given Dr Abernathy’s belongings, including his camera. He develops the roll of film and, in the very last shot, sees what looks like a flipper… Loch Ness is a peculiar film that doesn’t seem to know what audience it was being made for. It makes all the expected moves, being filled with beauty shots of the loch and its surrounds, populating the area with people either twee or eccentric, and serving up a simplistic you-just-have-to-believe message (along with a frank anti-science agenda) at a level that makes it seem targeted at a younger audience; but there is also a distinct lack of actual charm about the proceedings, which involve numerous unpleasant adults and adult situations that go a bit too far even in a redemption narrative, which this clearly is from the outset. Amusingly, we learn that John Dempsey ruined both his career and his marriage by spending three fruitless years in pursuit of Bigfoot. Less amusingly, Dempsey is such a dick during this film’s first third or so that it really never recovers from it (this was made just before everyone accepted that Ted Dansen was better at being nasty); while the attempt to redress the balance by introducing someone who is an even bigger dick – Ian Holm as the Water Bailiff – only makes things worse. The romance that develops between Dempsey and Laura is wholly unmotivated, though the scientist’s growing connection with her young daughter Isobel (Kirsty Graham) is more believable. Inevitably, it is Isobel’s belief that wins the day; but when she is persuaded to lead Dempsey to the underground cavern where he can see for himself what the secret of the loch really is, his very vindication threatens to destroy everything… One of the main shortcomings of Loch Ness is its too many people / not enough monsters scenario, but the latter, when they do show up, were the work of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

(Excuse me: since when is Nessie “he”?)

L.A. Confidential (1997)

Based upon the novel by James Ellroy. With the arrest and imprisonment of crime boss Mickey Cohen (Paul Guilfoyle), the LAPD steps up its efforts to crack down on organised crime and to improve its public image. Clean-cut young officer Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce) is made the face of a positive-spin article on his division and later makes it clear to Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) that he will have no truck with the rule-breaking that, behind the scenes, is still a way of life in his profession. This becomes very public when a drunken Christmas Eve party within the station turns violent and several inmates are beaten by police officers—all of it captured by the journalists still in the building. Exley convinces his superiors to agree to the prosecution and forced retirement of the officers involved whose pensions are secure, offering to testify in exchange for promotion to detective-lieutenant. Meanwhile, Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) of the narcotics division works in partnership with Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) of Hush-Hush magazine, receiving information and taking payment in exchange for ensuring that Hudgens is present at celebrity arrests; while Wendell “Bud” White (Russell Crowe) becomes involved with Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), one of a stable of high-class prostitutes run by businessman Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn), all of whom are made up or have undergone surgery to resemble Hollywood stars… L.A. Confidential is an example of the best kind of neo-noir, a film that thoroughly understands its roots without allowing itself to be distracted or seduced by them, or falling for that era’s fake glamour: in fact, the reality behind the fakery is very much what it is about. Though a streamlined version of its source novel, the adaptation by Brian Helgeland and director Curtis Hanson retains the essence of James Ellroy’s vision, offering as its background a beautifully evoked depiction of “the City of Angels” just at the point that its dream-factory reputation was souring beyond repair, and retaining the novel’s wry redressing of a couple of the era’s most famous signifiers—namely, the TV show Dragnet, appearing here as Badge Of Honor, and the magazine Confidential, transformed into Hush-Hush. But this, as I say, is the background. The real power of L.A. Confidential lies in its narrative: in the journeys taken by its three morally questionable protagonists—all implicated in the violence and corruption that are their profession’s SOP, but each finally confronted by something that he cannot bring himself to ignore, and by the consequent need to make a stand. For Vincennes, the moment comes when his participation in the framing of District Attorney Ellis Loewe (Ron Rifkin) leads to murder; while Bud White, following Patchett’s trail, finds it crossing Exley’s private investigation into the supposedly closed case of a massacre whose victims included forced retiree detective Stensland (Graham Beckel) and prostitute Susan Lefferts (Amber Smith). The three detectives join forces on a case that leads them into the dark heart of their own department… Though brutal and cynical, L.A. Confidential is a film to be cherished for the impeccable performances at its heart. Kevin Spacey is effective as the casually corrupt Vincennes, but it is Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe – neither much known in the US at the time, and whose casting Curtis Hanson had to fight for – who really stand out. Exley and White are set up at the outset as polar opposites, the former’s moral stance placed against the latter’s lack of qualms (to put it mildly) over the use of excessive force; but neither man is quite who he thinks he is, nor who the viewer is led to believe he is; and the pair’s finding of common ground is one of the narrative’s most compelling aspects. Particularly striking is the way that Russell Crowe was able, physically, to make White appear at the outset little more than a mindless thug; the gradual revelation that he is much smarter than he seems, is in fact a good detective, surprises no-one more than White himself. But there’s no accounting for taste, apparently, with Kevin Spacey walking off with the majority of the film’s acting gongs along with Kim Basinger, whose Veronica Lake-lookalike Lynn Bracken strikes me as more a presence than a performance. (The film’s Golden Globe for Best Ensemble Cast was probably most on the mark, though.)

Witchouse II: Blood Coven (2000)

Also known as: Witchouse 2. The demolition of an isolated house in Covington County for the construction of a mall is halted when the work uncovers the skeletal remains of four bodies. Forensic anthropologist Professor Sparrow (Ariauna Albright) and her students are sent to the scene to date the remains, take samples for DNA testing, and oversee their formal burial. When the scientists arrive, they receive an ominous welcome from Sheriff Jake Harmon (Andrew Prine), who urges them to be as quick as possible about their work. As the group settles in, researcher Stephanie Zinone (Elizabeth Hobgood) is dismayed to discover that the area promotes its history as a centre of witch-killing as a tourist attraction. The next morning, the group opens the graves: dating them from the 18th century, the professor oversees the collecting of bone samples for DNA extraction. She then orders Stephanie and videographer Norman Soderquist (Nicholas Lanier) into town to talk to the locals and learn more about Covington, while she and her assistants, Angela (Kaycee Shank) and Clark (Alexandru Dragoi), begin their analysis. While using a small circular saw, the professor cuts herself, getting bone dust in the wound—and soon evinces a drastic personality change… Witchouse II is a mostly-unrelated sequel to the previous year’s Witchouse: it likewise deals with the resurrection of executed witch Lilith LaFey, but relocates her from Dunwich to Covington and makes her reappearance accidental rather than deliberate. When she and the rest of her small coven are raised from the dead, they again manifest as glowing-eyed demons rather than anything recognisably witchy; and again the people battling them are scientists, though this film doesn’t make as much of the science / magic dichotomy. Witchouse II was a Full Moon production and as such is populated by small-town Massachusetts residents with Romanian accents. Typical of its time, it has Norman clutching a video camera throughout and inserts a lot of his footage without much reason for doing so, at least until they fall back on the camera-as-light-source trope. There is some successful humour here in the intercutting of Stephanie and Norman’s interviews with the locals, which are amusing in themselves and more so thanks to the casting in these minor roles of various B-movie figures including Jeff Burr, Dave Parker and Ted Newsom. (Also, Danny Draven plays one-half of the couple murdered in the running-time-padding opening sequence.) On the horror front Witchouse II isn’t so effective: it drags in spite of signs of ambition in its story and execution and it never manages to be scary. However, it does offer up Andrew Prine in an overt double role, and Ariauna Albright effectively in one, after the professor is taken over by Lilith. The film’s climax does do one surprising thing, but it’s really too little, too late.

Python 2 (2002)

Also known as: Pythons, Pythons 2, Python II. At the Russian-American Joint Military Operations Center, Colonel Robert Evans Jefferson Jr (Marcus Aurelius) briefs a local army unit on their mission: to help capture an 85-foot, 12-ton python loose in the Urals. Though the men suffer casualties, the snake is finally immobilised using two massive stun-guns and contained for shipment to the US. However, the cargo plane is shot down by Chechen rebels and crashes. After fighting the rebels, and noting the American insignia on the crash debris, a Russian unit recovers the container, which is undamaged. Later, an American called Larsen (William Zubka) hires former pro-baseballer Dwight Stoddard (Dana Ashbrook) and his Russian wife Nalia (Simmone Jade Mackinnon), who run a local shipping company, to collect the plane’s cargo from the military base to which it has been transferred and deliver it to Munich. Dwight and Nalia are suspicious of Larsen and the job but cannot turn down the payment offered. Meanwhile, at the base, Colonel Zubov (Ivaylo Geraskov) orders the strange container to be opened… I had a few good things to say about Python, but this sequel commits the one unforgivable sin of low-budget film-making: its boring. We are almost an hour in before anything even vaguely interesting happens. In fact, most of the first twenty minutes is unnecessary—though that opening certainly does set the tone for what follows, with lots of posturing and glowering and badly directed action sequences that fail to be either exciting or scary. The snake effects here are even less convincing than in the first film and the snake itself even stupider, with its constant roaring matched by moments in which the characters try to evade it by staying quiet. (And just wait until you’ve seen a blind woman outmanoeuvre it.) The only unexpected touch in this film – and even that isn’t in a good way – is the reworking of Greg Larsen aka Deputy Greg: last we saw of him, he was off to Quantico, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; but here he’s been transformed into a jaded CIA agent capable of carrying out “Black Projects”, i.e. no witnesses…which doesn’t bode well for his likely survival. Anyway— After a lot of standing around (and glowering, and posturing), Larsen, Dwight and Nalia, plus some random dead meat, end up at the military base where all hell, in the form of an 85-foot python, has broken loose. Larsen tries to abort the mission but is ordered in to collect a DNA sample in lieu of the entire creature. Naturally lots of screaming and swearing and running around follows – naturally someone has to climb through the ventilation ducts – and most naturally of all, Dwight finds the battle between man and snake riding on his old pitching skills…

(Fun fact: “python” is one of those words that, if you stare at it long enough, becomes completely meaningless and rather weird.)

Accident (2009)

Also known as: Assassins. A man is killed on a bustling Hong Kong street in what appears to be a grotesque accident—but which was not an accident at all. Scrutinising the chaotic scene, the orchestrater of the incident, Ho Kwok-fai (Louis Koo), nicknamed “the Brain” by his collaborators, takes a moment to retrieve a half-smoked cigarette discarded by the oldest member of his gang, “Uncle” (Stanley Fung). Meanwhile, “Fatty” (Lam Suet) oversees collection of the payment for the hit. At their headquarters, Uncle and “the Woman” (Michelle Ye) monitor news reports of the killing, which is reported as an accident but which, as the victim was a Triad leader, is nevertheless being investigated by the police. Conscious of his carelessness, Uncle tries to convince himself that, even if his DNA is retrieved from the scene, there is nothing to link him to the man’s death; though the Woman points out that one loose end might be enough to unravel the entire scheme; while the Brain reminds them sternly that someone is always watching… The gang’s next job is to eliminate their client’s wheelchair-bound father: they devise a scheme of electrocution that requires a rainy night to succeed. The job is finally pulled off in spite of a memory lapse on Uncle’s part in which he fails to block the security cameras. This “accident” is succeeded by another when a bus careens out of control, almost striking the Brain and finally hitting and killing Fatty… Soi Cheang’s Accident is a stark, unsettling film, though also one with a thread of black humour running through it—not least with respect to the bizarre death-traps that are the gang’s stock-in-trade (and which hardly hold up to scrutiny: the opening sequence is hilarious in hindsight). As with the best heist thrillers – and for the same reason, the inherent fascination of the planning and execution of the convoluted schemes – the initial phase of the film draws its audience into a sort of amoral identification with the gang, so that the repeated aborting of the second hit becomes almost as frustrating for the viewer as for the killers (and, presumably, for the victim’s murderous son). Gradually, however, focus shifts from the gang’s activities to an exploration of the Brain’s state of mind. We learn that the victim of the fatal car crash that opens the film was the Brain’s wife; that he believes her death was no accident; and also that he was the intended target. Consequently, behind his almost blank-slate demeanour lurks profound distrust both personal and professional, which is directed even at his partners: he surveilles them with and without their knowledge, constantly testing their truthfulness and reliability, and rejects any food bought just for him. We watch as he boards trains only as their doors are closing, pays bus fare with coins tipped from a bag to avoid leading fingerprints, and changes transport mode several times just when travelling home—and this is before the bizarre circumstances that almost kill him and do kill Fatty: circumstances that seem suspiciously similar to one of the gang’s own “accidents”. When his narrow escape is followed by the ransacking of his apartment and the theft of the proceeds from his “work”, the Brain’s paranoia slips its leash…  Accident is a film that must truly be watched, with numerous long, dialogue-less stretches that require strict attention in order to grasp just who is doing what to whom—or more correctly, what the Brain believes is being done to him. Its second half depicts his campaign to get one step ahead of the man he concludes, via a series of odd coincidences, is his secret enemy: insurance executive Chan Fong-chow (Richie Jen). This section of Accident seems to be invoking The Conversation, with the Brain putting Chan under visual and electronic surveillance and attempting to construct an entire narrative from the fractured information he collects—and filling in the gaps with his own imaginings. Finally the Brain decides that it’s time for another “accident”, but at the last moment Uncle reveals a secret that changes everything…

(Speaking of coincidences: I was not previously aware that Soi Cheang directed the recent Monkey King trilogy.)

Once A Gangster (2010)

During a Triad initiation, boss “Kerosene” (Alex Fong) notices a young man (Derek Tsang) who looks very much out of place. Later, as the other recruits eat bread, Kerosene discovers that the young man has prepared the ceremonial chicken from the initiation instead—and very well. He explains that his family owns a restaurant and that this is his ambition too, but that he doesn’t want to pay the necessary protection; instead, he has decided to attach himself to the people demanding payment. Kerosene assures the young man that, if he serves him loyally and helps him become the Don, in exchange he will be able to open as many restaurants as he wants. He also gives him the gang-name “Roast Pork”…  A savage gang-war puts Kerosene on top and he keeps his promise: Roast Pork (Jordan Chan) becomes a successful restaurateur with a celebrity clientele; he is also happily married and the father of two, and plans to escape the Triad. To his horror, when the debt-riddled Kerosene is forced to stand down as Don, he nominates Roast Pork as his successor. Salvation seems to come in the form of Swallow (Ekin Cheng), who twenty years before was promised the leadership in exchange for murdering an informant. However, during his prison time Swallow’s world-view has changed altogether—and he doesn’t want the leadership either… Felix Chong’s Once A Gangster is a film knowingly crafted for the fans of the Hong Kong crime drama—including, of course, the films of Felix Chong. It takes all of the genre’s tropes and spins them to its advantage in the story of two men trying to overcome the most inflexible trope of all: namely, that once you’re in, there’s no way out. The overarching narrative concerns the increasingly desperate war fought between Roast Pork and Swallow as they both try to find a way to lose the Triad election, only to be thwarted time and again by their own loyal followers. Yet despite its credentials and some brilliant patches of comedy, overall the film doesn’t work as well as it should. It never achieves quite the right balance of elements, with stretches that don’t move the narrative and, in particular, too much completely straight violence, some of it very nasty, in amongst the comic stuff; all of which tends to undermine and dissipate the humour. That said, the bits that do work, work beautifully; and there is much fun to be had in the film’s referencing of other films, which is both overt and occasionally surprisingly subtle. Once A Gangster reunites Jordan Chan and Ekin Cheng fourteen years after the first Young And Dangerous film and deliberately echoes aspects of the earlier franchise (Andrew Lau gets name-checked), while also nodding at Johnnie To’s Election films. One bizarre interlude has a crowd of gang-members suddenly bursting into the theme song from Triads: The Inside Story, originally performed by Chow Yun-fat. But the best joke is probably the spin on Infernal Affairs. The one person who does want leadership of the Triad is Scissors (Conroy Chan), but he is tacitly eliminated from the running by the fact that his trusted right-hand man, Yan (Wilfred Lau), is an undercover cop: something everyone knows except him. My personal favourite moment, though, is Scissors’ “acceptance speech”, when he thinks he has won the leadership. Reading back over this, I think I’m guilty of making Once A Gangster sound better than it objectively is. Sure, the fun is there; just be prepared for the stuff in between.

Tales From The Dark 1 (2013)

This is the first of two anthology films based upon the short stories of Lilian Lam, who also wrote the screenplay. The first segment, Stolen Goods, was the directing debut of actor Simon Yam, who appears as its central character. Kwan Fu-keung (Yam) is already struggling for survival when he is fired from his construction job. Desperate but determined not to accept welfare, he is inspired by a newspaper article to take on a new line of work: stealing funerary urns from a columbarium and holding them for ransom…  In A Word in the Palm, directed by Lee Chi-ngai, the ability of Ho (Tony Leung) to see ghosts has ruined his marriage and his career and left him to eke a living as a fortune-teller. When Cheung (Eddie Li) and his pregnant wife (Jeannie Chang) consult him about some strange experiences, Ho realises they are being haunted by the ghost of a schoolgirl who drowned herself… In Jing Zhe, directed by Fruit Chan, Chu (Susan Shaw) works as a “villain-hitter”, placing curses by striking photographs or paper effigies. Late one night, a pale young woman wearing only one shoe insists upon being Chu’s last customer for the day, asking for effigies of three men and one woman whose names she does not know… There are some creepy touches along the way in Tales From The Dark 1 and, in the final segment, some gruesome ones; but ultimately, the results are more interesting than scary. The film has the usual anthology problem of a lack of balance, with Stolen Goods and A Word in the Palm somewhat undermined by, respectively, an unnecessarily fractured narrative and some intrusive humour. However, the three stories are arranged in order of increasing effectiveness, so that the film holds the interest and gets better as it goes along, as well as generally succeeding in its evident aim of using ghost-lore to examine some of the darker aspects of contemporary society. The cast is also strong, with appearances in Stolen Goods by Jonathan Wong as a fainting policeman and Lam Suet as, in effect, the Asian Mr Creosote; in A Word in the Palm, by Kelly Chen as Lan, a crystal seller who wants to see ghosts; and in Jing Zhe, by Josephine Koo as an even scarier customer.

Lights Out (2016)

At a factory, Esther (Lotta Losten) glimpses a strange, threatening figure in the dark and tries to warn her boss, Paul (Billy Burke), but he is taken up with phone-calls to his nervous young son, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), and the doctor treating his unstable wife, Sophie (Maria Bello). But as he heads out, Paul discovers that the entity is only too real… After the death of her husband, Sophie’s mental health suffers still more, leaving young Martin to cope alone with her erratic behaviour—and something else. When he begins to fall asleep in class repeatedly, the school nurse calls Child Protective Services. Unable to get in touch with Sophie, Emma (Andi Osho) calls Martin’s only other relative, his older half-sister, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), who cut contact with her mother some time before. Reluctantly responding, Rebecca and her boyfriend, Bret (Alexander DiPersia), go with Martin to Sophie’s house. Martin tells Rebecca that Sophie has been talking to someone called “Diana”, but Rebecca assures him that Diana isn’t real. Discovering that her mother has not been taking her medication, Rebecca becomes angry and impulsively carries Martin away to stay the night at her apartment—where both are them are attacked by something from out of the dark… Lights Out is an expansion of David F. Sandberg’s 2013 short film of the same name, in which a woman, played by the director’s wife Lotta Losten, is terrorised by an entity that can be banished by the light but moves with deadly purpose in the dark. In a short no more was necessary, but at feature length there was an obvious need to explain or at least justify the entity, and this expansion is where the film falls down: it feels constructed, with everything an excuse for Diana’s existence rather than Diana growing organically, as it were, from the characters’ circumstances. Every aspect of the story feels half-baked, with each plot revelation raising rather than answering questions. The central info-dump is outrageous (where did Paul get all that, anyway?); while the explanation provided for Diana’s existence is simultaneously way too much and not nearly enough—including the fact that she was apparently some kind of quasi-supernatural being capable of getting “inside my head” before whatever happened at Mulberry Hill happened. The screenplay’s efforts to make Rebecca seem like some sort of “bad girl” are amazingly lame, even for PG-level horror; conversely, Bret, or Alexander DiPersia, overdoes it as the Nice Guy^TM boyfriend—though Bret’s resourcefulness in finding another source of light as needed is impressive. Still, Diana herself is a rather deliciously unnerving concept, and the film does gather steam from the blacklight basement sequence onwards, delivering some creepy touches and a couple of good jump-scares. Rebecca and Martin make an appealing duo as they battle their shared childhood trauma, and the shifting perception of Sophie, from unwitting villain to victim to conscious hero, is also effective.

(Short version: Lights Out can best be summed up by the fact that I kept hearing in my head the voice of Hermes Conrad: “That just raises further questions!”)

Kung Fu Yoga (2017)

While working on the restoration of the Terracotta Army, archaeologist Professor Jack Chan (Jackie Chan) is approached by an Indian colleague, Dr Ashmita (Disha Patani), about his research into the Kingdom of Madagha. She shows him an ancient topographical map believed to hold the key to the disappearance of a great treasure during a battle between India troops and a rebel faction centuries before. Jack has his assistants, Zhu Xiaoguang (Lay Zhang) and Noumin (Miya Muqi), use their newly developed technology to restore the details of the map. To further help solve the mystery, Jack recruits Jones Lee (Aarif Rahman), the son of an old treasure-hunting friend and an expert on the Magadha Treasure; while Ashmita is joined by her own assistant, Kyra (Amyra Dastur). The party travels to the Kunlun Mountains, where they believe the lost army got caught by an avalanche and buried with their treasure; with their general surviving to draw his map. Locating a likely site, Jack summons his friend Jianhua (Eric Tsang), whose equipment removes an ice core to expose a huge cavern below. There, the party discovers the remains of the lost army along with the treasure; but almost immediately, they are attacked by a band of mercenaries led by Randall (Sonu Sood), the descendant of the rebel Indian general, who claims the treasure as his own. In the confusion, Jones escapes with a huge diamond and flees, while the others are trapped and left to die… This sort-of sequel to The Myth is a lackadaisical hodge-podge of elements even for a treasure-hunting film, blending travelogue footage, fight scenes, car chases, CGI animals and political propaganda in an awkward and frankly uncomfortable manner. This was supposed to be the first Chinese-Indian co-production, but the latter pulled out at the last moment; perhaps suggesting why, it did poorly in India while going through the roof in China—becoming, indeed, Jackie Chan’s all-time highest-grossing film there, which is actually a bit dismaying to contemplate. If Jackie was really getting too old for this shit in The Myth, he was definitely too old for it twelve years later—albeit he is still unsurprisingly the best thing about Kung Fu Yoga. Surrounding him are a clutch of multi-national young people apparently cast for their looks before their talent; although the stilted dialogue and the requirement to deliver chunks of it in English did no-one any favours. After an astonishingly badly animated opening sequence setting up the historical back-story, the action shifts to Xi’an and then to the Kunlun Mountains (Iceland standing in), before Jones, implied to be the son of William from The Myth (though the details don’t add up and they wisely keep it fuzzy), surprises no-one but his lifelong friend by turning traitor and stealing a huge diamond artefact—thus carrying the action to Dubai, where we spend time over a luxury-car chase / pile-up sequence and a carsick lion (don’t ask). The final stretch of the film unfolds in Rajasthan, and though much of it is beautiful to look at, every story detail here is an embarrassing cliché; while the film’s climax somehow manages to be unbelievable and completely inevitable at the same time. Some of the fight choreography in Kung Fu Yoga is impressive or at least entertaining, and Jackie and Stanley Tong get around the former’s stiffening muscles by having Jack and Asmita perform as a double-act, which often works surprisingly well despite the necessary wire-support. As you will gather from this, kung fu is definitely privileged over yoga here in spite of their co-billing in the title, with the latter being given very short shrift—although its brief presence does allow us to hear the 68th generation descendant of Prince Gitanjali of Magadha say “perineum”, which I doubt was on anyone’s bingo card.

The Witness (2018)

A woman who has been abducted manages to break free from her assailant, running in terror through the woods towards the nearest lighted buildings… Han Sang-hoon (Lee Sung-min), his wife Soo-jin (Jin Kyung) and their young daughter Eun-ji (Park Bom) have just moved into the apartment they have purchased when Sang-hoon rings home to say he will be late, as he is expected to buy celebratory drinks for his colleagues; this in lieu of inviting them over. Arriving home drunk in the early hours, Sang-hoon startles another tenant, Seo-yeon (Bae Jung-hwa), when he forces his way into the elevator. After a moment, she tells him that she thought she heard a scream… Once inside his apartment, Sang-hoon too suddenly hears a terrified cry. Crossing to his balcony, he witnesses a young woman being brutally attacked in the grounds below. Taking out his phone, he begins to call for help, but is startled when the lights are turned on by a sleepy and irritable Soo-jin. Below, the killer (Kwak Si-yang ) looks up from his bloody work… Dousing the lights, Sang-hoon persuades Soo-jin to go back to bed before returning cautiously to the balcony—immediately making eye-contact with the killer, who is carefully counting the floors of the apartment building… Directed by Jo Kyu-jang, The Witness is a thriller with a social conscience which offers some stringent criticisms of South Korean society as well as investigating where the line lies between responsibility to the community and responsibility to oneself and one’s own. The film sets up a Kitty Genovese-esque scenario, with a young woman beaten to death in full view of several high and fully tenanted apartment blocks, and takes matters a step further by depicting, not merely a group-mind that supposes “someone else” will call the police, but a group-mind confident that no-one will. When the police do arrive the next morning, led by Inspector Jae-yeob (Kim Sang-ho), they are met by a stone wall of silence that extends to a circulated tenants’ agreement not to talk to investigators or the media, in order to protect their district’s reputation and therefore its property values. The revelation that the victim did not die during the initial attack – that the killer returned two hours later to finish her – that one anonymous phone-call could have saved her life – moves no-one; no-one, that is, but Seo-yeon, whose guilty conscience finally gets the better of her—and who pays the price… From this point onwards, it is hard to know what to make of The Witness. Having apparently set itself up to criticise the selfish self-protection of its characters and the moral paralysis of Sang-hoon in particular, it then begins, in effect, to offer excuses for the lack of response—although without ever really feeling like an objective examination of both sides of the question. There are several suggestions that to take action against crime only invites retaliation; while Sang-hoon’s fears for himself and his family prove wholly justified when the killer begins an escalating campaign of terror and violence against him and Seo-yeon. This is where the film really goes off the rails, with the essentially faceless killer suddenly able to be anywhere and do anything and kill anybody; he might as well be Jason Voorhees. (He favours hammer attacks, probably an allusion to real-life serial killer Yoo Young-chul.) Finally, presumably to provide Sang-hoon with a measure of redemption, the screenplay has him belatedly step up and fight back against the killer—though this requires the police to disappear during the film’s final act, when they should be responding to an attack upon them. All this muddy water (figurative and, at the climax, literal) works against the success of The Witness; and its coda, which indicates we were watching the film we thought we were at the outset, only adds to the frustration.

(Sigh. The Han family has a dog, and from the moment we lay eyes on it we know the poor little thing is doomed…)