(aka, Jie ma you xi) A Chinese Hacker Thriller? Well, they have been making films in almost every Western genre — or subgenre. So why not? Mind you, the classic Hacker Thriller has been a bit scarce lately even if it does surface again now and then. But that, once again leads us to the […]
Read more "Reborn (2018)"You need to pay attention to Ed Kirk. If you haven’t noticed him yet, he just released Future Soldier, a beautiful micro-budgeted feature film which is more polished and better constructed than a lot of the science fiction films out there — including some which are far more expensive. While this is his first feature […]
Read more "Future Soldier (2023)"A group of thieves carry out a daring jewel robbery, and go to meet their fence in a deserted factory. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that the gangster they’re dealing with plans to rob them. Or that the United States Army has been conducting some rather nasty off-the-books experiments in that old factory. Which, unfortunately, have […]
Read more "Junk: Shiryô-gari [Junk] (2000)"3-D. I don’t know why everyone keeps coming back to 3-D. It seems that there is a fairly regular cycle of 3-D movies: someone invents a new 3-D technology, or perhaps just puts out a few new 3-D movies, and the theaters are suddenly full of films with things coming at you. It happened in […]
Read more "V-World Matrix (1999)"I’m never quite sure what to expect when I come across yet another elegant, beautifully made science fiction film, from Mainland China, loaded with action and special effects. After all, there have been so many of them lately. And quite a few of them have impressed me. I’ll admit that. You can even find some […]
Read more "Po meng youxi [Dream Breaker] (2018)"I’ve been looking for this one for a while. Back in 2011, Jeff Waltrowski released an interesting microbudgeted faux-Thirties film called It Came from Yesterday which riffed on the old adventure serials. Jeff himself starred as Professor Jack Cranston, genius inventor and the head of the crime-fighting Electric Club, which was a sort of cross […]
Read more "Project: Valkyrie (2002)"Look, let’s be honest. This is one of the so-called “Zen Movies” Donald G. Jackson and his star and co-writer (if that phrase has any real meaning here) Scott Shaw made together. They are called Zen movies because they had no script. Yep, no script. Nada. Nothing. They started with some general idea what the […]
Read more "Guns of El Chupacabra (1997)"It should be a big deal. After all, Warriors of Future was Hong Kong’s first attempt to go head-to-head with Hollywood, making its first big budget blockbuster movie. And while it doesn’t have quite as big a budget as the latest Marvel movie, it does have a lot of the things we expect from Hollywood: […]
Read more "Ming yat zin gei [Warriors of Future] (2022)"Where to begin… I suppose it might help to note that this hugely ambitious Korean film, loaded with weird special effects and dizzying action sequences, failed to attract a huge audience at the time, and left viewers wildly divided between those who adored it and those who hated the very ground it treads upon. Yeah, […]
Read more "Sungnyangpali sonyeoui jaerim [Resurrection of the Little Match Girl] (2002)"It’s amazing that it took until 1997 — a full thirteen years — for someone to figure out that the one thing that was missing from The Terminator was… Dinosaurs. One of the best parts of low budget films is that they don’t have the studio hanging over their shoulder, making demands and telling them […]
Read more "Future War (1997)"
rivets on the poster 