I, Portrait (2021)

Friend of the site Nate Hill reached out to see if we could review some more of his films, starting with this one. Considering how much I enjoyed the first four I watched, that was a no-brainer. In addition to us, Romey Norton at Film Focus Online has covered this as well.

I, Portrait follows famous painter Carmen (Natalie Heslop), who has just married casting director Julian (Hill), and is looking to get back into painting after taking a break. The thing is, if she paints blindfolded, and focuses on what she's painting, whatever she paints becomes reality. Her husband indulges it, if only to have the blindfolding lead to some sexy lovemaking, but the next day Carmen's old friend Stephanie (Sienna Stass) shows up unexpectedly. Could the painting be connected? After getting the initial pleasantries out of the way, Carmen gets the sense Steph wants to hook up with her husband, which naturally would be upsetting to anyone, but when Steph decides to overstay her welcome, now things seem like they're turning downright sinister. Will Carmen get to the bottom of everything in time?

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It brought back memories of 90s Erotic Thrillers, but in a modern, Australian setting, which made it all more refreshing. I had some qualms about a few things, one of which is the ending, which I'll get to in a later paragraph so I don't spoil it for anyone, but there were some real inspired moments too. My favorite scene came when the three of them went out to eat after Stephanie arrived. No dialog, just music and shots of each of their faces, but in those shots, we could see how Stephanie was making eyes at Julian, how Julian was appreciating the attention, and how Carmen wasn't. It built tension and moved the plot in a really creative and organic way that I always love seeing. One of the qualms actually also highlighted something I liked about the film. As the tension was building to the end, there's a break where Carmen and Julian go to a club and listen to a singer, Leslie Lawrence, who's performing this haunting, but also apt song called "Rain." The problem for me was, it was the whole song, and at this point I want to get to that ending because of how well it's all built up! I felt like when I order food, and the app says it'll arrive at one time, but it's 30 minutes later. You can't leave your audience hungry like that! But the fact that that tension was built so well, and that song fit so well, was another aspect I appreciated, so it's a good problem to have. Speaking of songs, Nate's long-time collaborator Jane Badler sings the opening, "Yesterday's Tomorrows," which had a 90s feel and got me in the 90s Erotic Thriller mindset; and then "Secret Smiles," written by William Katt--yes that William Katt--and performed by "Billy Katt," who I assume is him too, so really cool to have him do one of the songs. If you're wondering why William Katt is tagged here, that's why. For me, even with the qualms, this is 80s minutes of Erotic Thriller fun, and well worth checking out.

This is now five films for Nate on the site, and I initially planned to rank them, but this one kind of throws the idea of ranking them out the window. It's more serious than the other four I've reviewed, but what I think I loved most was how, as serious as it was, it didn't forget to include the fun, which is the best part of the Erotic Thriller. I joke about how when I saw Lady Terror, I didn't get the humor in it and had to watch some of Nate's other films, but I wonder if I'd seen this one before that if I would've gotten it more too, because here he isn't as much tongue-in-cheek, it's more straight ahead, and the fun is the fun you find in a well-made Erotic Thriller, so it would've made a good comparison point. One thing I think I would've liked more out of this one though, is if his character was kept out of things a bit more. I think there's an idea of a love triangle, but really it's more about the tension between Carmen and Stephanie, and Julian worked better for me as another vessel for that tension between them.

Speaking of which, the performances by Natalie Heslop and Sienna Stass really made this for me. None of this works if they both weren't all in, not just on the sexual stuff, but the tense interactions and the physical confrontations too. When Stephanie first shows up at the door, we gotta know that she's bad news, and then get the anticipation of the tension that will come as Natalie starts to pick up on that bad news. There were a few moments where I think that could've even been played better. For example, after the dinner date with Julian, the two go horseback riding, and then Natalie offers to do Stephanie's make-up. I think we needed something more there, whether it's Natalie doing Stephanie's make-up to make her look plainer compared to how she looked when they all went out to eat, or maybe she has insecurities, and she purposefully makes Stephanie look hot so it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in her mind that Julian will cheat. Right after that scene, Carmen's friend Kelly shows up, and Carmen rudely introduces Stephanie to her as "this is Stephanie, she's from the country," not, "this is Stephanie, she's my old friend from high school." If there could've been some more palpable tension during the make-up scene, like there was at the dinner scene, that rudeness, and then Stephanie's response, would've worked better. Again, that's a minor qualm on what were two great performances.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

If you're reading after this, you've been warned, but I needed to talk about the ending, and I didn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. I don't know that it would ruin the film for you, and you may disagree that it was even an issue. Leading up to the end, it was great. As I mentioned above, the tension was building, then we get the confrontation, which was everything you want in an Erotic Thriller showdown. But then, as the fight goes to the pool, Julian wakes up from his concussion, and joins the fight, ultimately helping Carmen hold Stephanie's head underwater and drown her. It was too cold blooded an ending, I need the baddie to somehow either die by their own hand, or leave the heroes no choice, and here once they'd sufficiently restrained her, drowning seemed excessive. Now, Nate mentioned a possible future film where he marries the characters from his films into one universe, and if the plan is to say actually Carmen and Julian let Stephanie up and called the cops, and then maybe Phillyda Murphy's Candace Knight breaks her out of the mental hospital she's confined in and the team up to try to take out Jasper, I'll take all this back. Short of that though, it just didn't sit as well with me as the rest of the film.

END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!!

Finally, if you've been rockin' with us for any amount of time, you know I'm a bit of a transit geek, so when I saw a Melbourne commuter train in the beginning I was stoked. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page--which I did during the commercials on Plex--told me that Melbourne's transit underwent a similar period of being diminished in favor of the car as it did in the US, but starting in the late 90s, there's been a resurgence there, supported by the government, that we haven't had here yet. They also farmed out the service to a private company, which we're starting to see here now as well with Brightline service. Anyway, beyond my geekiness, I thought the inclusion of the commuter train was important to the story too. Trains often portend ominous events, and this one appeared at the same time we first saw Stephanie, so it was all kind of Hitchcockian in that way; on the other hand though, the fact that it was a commuter train, something people take to and from work every day, brought home Nate's theme of his stories, how everyday people can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and while Julian would never take a commuter train, using it in the background as that metaphor allows Nate to reinforce that theme. It's just more really great stuff that I love seeing in a movie.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Even though IMDb says this is on Tubi, as far as I can tell it's no longer there, so Plex is the best option here in the States, or you can rent it from Prime--which isn't a bad way to support indie creatives either. This is just a fun Erotic Thriller, it's not trying to be anything more than it is, but with the cast and crew fully invested, it fulfills exactly what you want when you fire it up on your streaming device. Can't wait to see what Nate's got for us next!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6831966

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Chris Claremont's X-Men (2018)

It's almost Christmas, and you know what that means? Our annual unofficial Christmas documentary post. Since I came back from hiatus in 2019, I've done a documentary at this time every year except for two: 2020, where I was late and did the He-Man documentary in January of 2021, and in 2022, when I did the Dolph flick Pups Alone instead. Anyway, in addition to us, RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this as well.

Chris Claremont's X-Men is about Chris Claremont's run on one of Marvel's greatest franchises, and how it wasn't one of Marvel's greatest franchises until he was given the book, and did amazing things with it. The documentary looks at his rise at a young age in Marvel, how he was kind of given X-Men because it wasn't doing well, his work with John Byrne, Louise Simonson, and Ann Nocenti that gave us so many classic X-Men storylines, and then Marvel's push to make more money, saturation in the market, and the rise of youngsters like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld that led to Claremont's exit. Overall, the legacy he left is massive, and comics wouldn't be the same without him.

This was a fantastic documentary, but my biggest complaint--and one that Freddie Young at Full Moon Reviews shared when he was on podcast episode 189 with me--is that it could've been longer! You can probably count on one hand how many times I've wanted a movie to be longer, but at 71 minutes this film could've used another 20 minutes of background. What it gives you though is the genesis of how the modern X-Men came to be, and how it cemented itself with Spider-Man as the number one properties Marvel had in the 80s going into the 90s. One area that they didn't get into was the post Claremont period, especially in the 2010s when Disney bought Marvel, but Fox still had the rights to the X-Men, so Disney had Marvel diminish the X-Men in the comics in favor of the Avengers so younger audiences would be less inclined to see the X-Men movies. Because this came out in 2018, it couldn't have foreseen the Disney purchase of Fox and how that dynamic may be changing now, but I think Disney trying to diminish his legacy was an important element they left out. They also left out, as far as I remember, that Claremont came back to Marvel to work on new X books. Beyond that though, this is what you want from a movie like this, especially if you grew up reading the X-Men comics like I did.

I started collecting comics in earnest around the time Claremont was being forced out by Marvel's heads, which is something I had no idea about, but I knew the name Chris Claremont. All the back issues, all the great storylines he conceived, like Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past, and all the great characters he had a part in creating, or like Wolverine, developed after they were created by someone else. X-Men as a property wouldn't have been worth Fox buying the rights to in the first place if it wasn't for Claremont's work, and even with Disney trying to diminish it, after a lackluster 2023, it's now those same X-Men characters that they're hoping will help right the ship. Another way to think of it though, the fact that the MCU was able to be as successful as it had been without the X-Men, and without Spider-Man to start, is a testament to their ingenuity, but also testament to the legacy and shadow cast by Claremont; but also I think too, the fact that the Fox adaptations of his stories and characters wasn't as successful shows that you can't just recreate someone else's work. I saw he did get a thank you credit for 2019's Dark Phoenix, but I wonder if he couldn't help the other Fox productions because he was under contract with Marvel? Another area this film missed.

What they didn't miss was Claremont's focus on female characters. He said in the film that when he created a character, he asked himself "could this character be a woman?" The volume of female characters he created was immense, and really filled a gap in Marvel's universe, one that was really apparent when the MCU started and we didn't get a female-helmed film until Captain Marvel. The thing is though, with Fox having the rights to Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, etc., it wasn't like they were jumping to make any female-helmed films either. It was a massive missed opportunity I think, but now that Disney and Marvel Studios no longer have the excuse that a lot of their best female characters are with Fox, let's see what they put together in the coming years. The other legacy of Claremont's work, is the large amount of young women who grew up comic book fans. Hopefully Marvel Studios will lean into that legacy more.

In my review on the Image Revolution documentary, I talked about how much I loved Jim Lee and Rob Liefield in the early 90s, but this film paints a different picture of their role. A big part of it was the higher-ups were more interested in making the X-Men property bigger than just The Uncanny X-Men, but with each new book, Claremont was spread that much thinner, until it was all taken away from him and split up. Would the bubble have burst if the Marvel execs hadn't been so keen on maximizing dollars? Sure, I wouldn't have had that iconic X-Men #1 five cover set, and maybe we don't get Deadpool or Cable from Liefeld, but the two of them left to form Image anyway, which hastened the bursting of the bubble that we eventually got. If instead of four Spider-Man books, and five or six X books, we had one of each that we as fans could focus on--and only one cover of each issue, and not an overly expensive milestone issue--maybe us kids would've stuck with it. We have this idea that businessmen, especially billionaires, are really good at business, but more often than not, they're just really rich from generational wealth, and just want to make as much money as possible on one thing, then move onto the next, not worrying about who might be left in the wake. Someone running Marvel properly in the early 90s might've handled that all differently, and maybe we don't get the bubble burst.

Finally, mixed in with the images of comic book panels and people giving interviews, the movie had cosplayers dressed as some of the most well-known X-Men. Cosplaying is an art I've always appreciated, to just take characters and make them your own like that is great. It's like visual fan fic, or like me in my novels, where I create my own ideas inspired by other things I've seen and heard. In Philly it's particularly interesting, because the convention center is located across the street from the Trader Joe's where I often go on Saturdays to get some groceries. It's common when we have cosplay conventions for people to pop in to get stuff while in their full outfit. And it makes sense too, because I know for me, wherever I travel, if there's a Trader Joe's, I can get stuff cheap--for example, if you're ever in San Francisco, that Trader Joe's and Target are both Godsends compared to how expensive the rest of the city is. And Philly's no different. If you're here for a cosplay convention, and you need a cheap snack and a drink, you're much better off hitting the Trader Joe's, than overspending at Reading Terminal Market. As an aside, if you're in Philly and want to get a cheesesteak, don't get it from the Market, they're all mediocre at best. Let me know if you're in town, and I'll point you to the best spots.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi, Prime, and other major streamers. If you're a comic book fan, this is a must, but I also think for non-comic fans, to see the origin of some of these stories and to get a better sense of how the business worked in the 70s and 80s, it is really interesting.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7929156

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One More Shot (2024)

As we get Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White closer to the 30 Club, we had to do this gem from 2024 that featured both of them. This was one we covered on the podcast back in September with Rich Hawes of the DTV Digest, episode 176 in the archives, so you can check that out, and in addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this too.

One More Shot picks up where One Shot left off. Our hero is transporting Amin, the guy who knows where the bomb is, back to Washington, DC, but to get there, they fly into Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) and plan to drive him the rest of the way, and on the ride, get the Amin's wife to convince him to tell them where the bomb is going to go off. A gang of mercenaries led by Michael Jai White have other plans though, and as Adkins is talking to his own wife on the phone to tell her he'll be home soon, he sees some suspicious guys walk through the airport that he just has to investigate, and sure enough, they're baddies. "Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in!" Oh you're back in Mr. Adkins, will you be able to protect the asset and take out all the baddies?

This is a pretty sweet deal. It actually fits as a good companion to the first one, and there's talk of a third one coming too. A lot of action, well staged, well choreographed, and well shot. Adkins is great in the lead, White is great as the baddie, and Berenger is great as the grizzled CIA vet. There were some issues though too. It's a little long, I don't know that it needed to be a buck-forty-five; Alexis Knapp was good, but I don't know if she fit the role she was cast in; and the one shot element made for a more dynamic experience, but the fact that the camera was moving all the time was a bit much for my personal taste, where I like good still shots--especially of actors so I can get my screens! But those are more minor issues compared to an overall winner. If director James Nunn needed to make a sequel, this is what we'd want for that.

We're at 28 now for Mr. Adkins, so he's closing in on that 30 Club membership. What I like about him here, is this is a classic Adkins-led actioner, one where he isn't forced into action because one of his kids has been kidnapped, he's just a special forces guy who wants to go home and see his family, but out of duty he can't ignore it when he sees something suspicious. There's almost something Dante from Clerks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" about it, but also that he knows he's the only guy standing between the baddies and success, so he needs to get after it. In terms of getting him to 30, we have Lights Out in the can already, plus a film called Incoming that I saw before that was finally back on Tubi. The problem is neither is a good 30th film post for him, so we can only do one or the other first, and then the other will need to be saved for 31.

Our other Hall of Famer is Michael Jai White, and while he doesn't have as big of a role, as his baddie duties are split with another baddie, what we get is good enough, especially in his fight with Adkins. This is 26 for him, which means he's closing in on the 30 Club too, the only issue is his two most recent ones that we could do on the site, MR-9 and The Island, are stuck on Starz, while his other newest one, Don't Mess with Grandma, isn't on anything yet. Still, he has some back catalog stuff we could get to as well to get him over the hump. Another thing worth mentioning is that his film from the end of last year, Outlaw Johnny Black, was our most popular post by far, and shows that between that and Black Dynamite, White brings something extra to the table that we love seeing. He gives this film some added muscle in a smaller role, but we love him in those leading roles even more, so hopefully I can get more of those up soon too.

Beyond Spiro Razatos, and guys like Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott that worked with him at PM, I'm not as up on the other names in the stunt business as I should be, but Rich mentioned that the fight choreographer in this, Tim Man, and the stunt coordinator, Dan Styles, have an exceedingly great track record in recent DTV action, especially as part of this new movement of great DTV action coming out of England. I was looking at it, and Man has 11 films we've covered, and Styles has 8, many of which they've worked on together, and these are some of best ones we've had in the last 15 years or so, Avengement, Accident Man, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, to name a few. We're talking not only the biggest names in action, like Adkins and White, but the best DTV action directors, like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, Ross Boyask, and in this film, James Nunn. Now you may be asking, "Matt, if you're the DTV Connoisseur, how do you not know this stuff already, why do you need Rich to tell you?", and that's a fair question, but that's why I have such great guests on the pod, like Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, because they provide great information that I miss, and that's why if you're not listening, you should be.

Finally, this took place at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but was shot at London Stansted Airport. I've been to Heathrow and Gatewick before, the largest and second largest airports, but not Stansted--which means maybe I need to do a "research" tax write-off trip?--but one interesting thing I discovered when I looked into it, is when Obama and Trump flew on Air Force One to the UK, this was the airport they landed in, so it works in the "official government business" aspect it was used for in this movie. I also found out that London has six airports, which is double the amount New York has, the city that is second to it in overall traffic in the world, but it looks like one reason for that is because it's hard to expand Heathrow due to it's location. In America, we don't give a shit about people's houses when it comes to things like airport or highway expansion, especially people in underrepresented groups--we're seeing it here in Philly with the desire to build an NBA arena right next to Chinatown, even knowing what the arena in DC did to their Chinatown when they did the same thing. Hell, as Todd Liebenow pointed out on the Deadly Prey episode of the pod (175 in the archives), we even got an action movie out of just such an expansion, when Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson expanded and all the houses they were displacing needed to be demolished, they let the Cannon folks blow them all up in Invasion USA. Maybe this is how we get the third One Shot movie: Heathrow expands, they can blow up all the houses, and everyone's happy--except for the people who lost their homes, but small price to pay, right?

I kid of course, the last thing any of us want to see is people lose their homes over airport or highway expansions--or sports arenas like here in Philly. Instead, the thing to see is this film. It does help to have seen the first one, which is on Hulu, and then this one is Netflix, so you're bouncing between streamers, but if you have both, watch them both. And then listen to the podcast episode we did on this one with Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest, number 176 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27110516

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Bouncer (2024)

This film was another screener request from producer Joe Williamson, who usually gets us something with Mel Novak, or something directed by Harley Wallen, both of which we really enjoy. This time though we got an actioner with names we recognized in supporting roles, and an up-and-comer in the lead. Let's see how it did.

The Bouncer has John Ozuna as a bouncer and martial arts expert whose mother is dying of cancer, and needs money for her operation, and was being accused of killing a patron at the club he was a bouncer for. This means he needs to leave town and head to Bucharest, where he's squatting at someone's apartment and making a living as a bouncer at a fancy club. This seems like it'll work, until he sees crime boss Kane (Costas Manylor), hit his girlfriend Sylvia (Rosemary Yaneva), and decides to step in. It doesn't end well, so he and Sylvia hit the road, and now they're on the run while Mandylor, all his cronies, and all the baddies in the city are after him. Will he and Sylvia make it out alive?

This is pretty paint-by-numbers. Damsel in distress, being held by an evil "king," down on his luck vagrant hero steps in, saves the day, and gets the girl. What works about that for me is it's a quick watch, and simple plot, so it gets you to the church on time. I also liked Ozuna as the hero, but this was his first lead role as far as I could tell, so he's still getting the hang of it. What doesn't work is the extra stuff. The mom kind of disappears, especially at the end. It felt like she was a plot device that felt necessary at the beginning of the script-writing process, that wasn't so much by the end. I think the wrongly accused and being on the run would've been enough, but even that isn't exactly a plot point either. Like what if the police were helping Mandylor find Ozuna? Or instead of the wrongly accused element, what if you went with the mom dying and needing an operation, and that's his dilemma: do I keep this bouncer job that pays really well when I need the money, or do I risk it all to do the right thing? But again, with its flaws, at its heart it's a low-budget actioner that isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, and sometimes that's all you need.

The first name that came to mind when I saw Ozuna was Jalal Mehri, and we know he had a pretty solid career in the 90s, so if that's where Ozuna ends up, that's not too bad. On his IMDb trivia, it says he holds two Guinness World Records in martial arts: most punches in one minute (713); and the fastest martial arts punch (43.3 mph). And the talent is definitely there, but as we know with other great martial artists, the practitioner element is only part of it. The "It" factor is also important, and that's the area where Ozuna will grow as he does more pictures. Going back to the Mehri comp, one thing he did was surround himself with other talent. He worked with Cynthia Rothrock, Bolo Yeung, Billy Blanks, David Bradley, Loren Avedon, Olivier Gruner, etc. While this had some names too, getting some established martial arts talent to work with him, and maybe even someone like an Art Camacho to direct and help out on fight choreography, could be that next step to get him into that next level of stardom. I think Camacho does stuff with R. Ellis Frazier, who makes a lot of films in Mexico with names like Gary Daniels, I'd love to see Ozuna in a project like that. Either way, it'll be fun to see what we get next from him.

Out of everyone in the film, the name with the most tags on our site was Gerald Okamura. He has a very small role as Ozuna's master in a flashback sequence, but any time we get to see him is a great time. Joe mentioned that this was his first film in nine years, that one being Samurai Cop 2, but he liked the script and decided to go for it. I feel bad as well, because his 84th birthday was on November 23rd, and I missed it. I also realized I was missing five films he was in that we'd reviewed but hadn't tagged him for yet, so he's now at 19 films on the site, and when I look at his bio, I see a bunch of films he did that we could do on here, which means the 30 Club is a possibility, and due to the Asylum rule, 30 Club is automatic entry into the Hall of Fame. Gerald Okamura, DTVC Hall of Famer, has a nice ring to it. Here's to you Mr. Okamura, you're one of the greats.

While the plot point about the mother needing money for an operation didn't play a huge part in the rest of the film, it is very relevant considering current events in America, with the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, and the social media jokes that followed, like "Sorry, the bullet was out of network, so the extraction isn't covered." It's a reality that that CEO, and many other health insurance CEOs, are responsible for many more deaths than the guy who will probably get life in prison for killing him, but in America some murders are okay, and some are punished--and some are punished by punishing the wrong person. All that said, it's a great plot device for an action movie, right? And we've seen it for years. Guy's daughter's in the hospital, we need hundreds of thousands of dollars for an operation? Time for that one last heist--which goes horribly wrong. This one mixed it up a bit because it was the mom, but the plot device is the same. What if someone made an action film where the hero went on a revenge spree to take down a health insurance CEO? We need to get to that level where health insurance executives in America are seen on the same level as human traffickers and animal poachers, what I call "baddie in a can." Maybe current events will get us closer to that. The other thing the current events bring up that this film ignored, is the idea of needing money, but is how you make it worth compromising your principles? Because Ozuna needed the money, I wish we had more of that dilemma, where he likes the job, but he risks it to do the right thing. As a health insurance CEO, can you sleep at night if you're making millions of dollars off people's suffering? Or as Ozuna the bouncer, can you sleep at night saving money for your mother's operation knowing you're looking the other way at Mandylor's evil doings? It's a question this movie didn't address enough, but I wish it would have.

Finally, the character of Sylvia was played by Rosemary Yaneva, who looks a lot like Lisa Marie Presley. In the Pulp Fiction binary of "Beatles" or "Elvis," I am an Elvis Man, but I also like a lot of Beatles songs too. I think my favorite from Elvis is "One Night" from The '68 Comeback Special, but with Christmas around the corner, you also have to love "Blue Christmas." He would've been 90 in January, but even crazier for me, as someone who's now 45, Elvis was only 42 when he passed. I was debating on whether or not to bring back the DTVC Extra in 2025, but maybe a look at some Elvis films could be a fun project, especially in honor of what would've been his 90th birthday.

But that's for another time, so let's wrap this one up. Currently you can rent this on Amazon here in the States for $3.99. If you want to support indie creatives near the holiday, that's a great way to do it, but if money's tight and you want to wait for it to come out on a free streamer, I understand. This is a fun low-budget actioner, especially for when you're in the mood for a fun, low-budget actioner.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16758460

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Shepherd Code (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on an episode of the podcast, number 167 in the archives. We wanted to get some Don "The Dragon" Wilson on the pod, so when we saw this was on Tubi, we gave it a shot, despite thinking "The Drags" may not be in it much. Let's see how it did.

The Shepherd Code has Alan Delabie (who also wrote, co-directed, produced, and action directed) as a guy who's known as the best in the elite bodyguarding world. That is, until he falls for the woman he's guarding, and she ends up dead! As he tracks down the killer, a jerkoff named Edson (Silvio Simac), his handler, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, has another job for him. But he's retired? Just one more job. So he takes it, shepherding a rich girl (Victoria Axensalva) through the UK, and as luck would have it, Edson is the jerkoff who wants to kill this girl too, so Delabie can protect her and get his revenge all in one go. It's really convenient, like steam-in-bag veggies.

What do you want me to say about this one? It's close to being one of those Samurai Cop/Miami Connection kind of deals, but considering the earnestness with which Delabie tries to pull this off, it's kind of endearing. The Wilson is scant, and that may be the thing that hurts it the most, but who knows how much time they got him for. I think the thing that both hurts it, and makes it fun in a Samurai Cop kind of way, is the holes in the plot. Like near the end Delabie and Axensalva are walking in the woods to meet the baddie, and she stops to tie her shoe, and he just keeps walking, leaving her behind, which causes him to lose her and the baddies to find her. How is the best bodyguard in the world that oblivious to where the person he's guarding is? It's like a parent in the 80s forgetting their kid at Chuck E. Cheese's. There's something so Continental European guy who's totally full of himself and doesn't care about anyone else about it. But again, does that kind of thing make it worse or better? It depends on your outlook, but if you're up for it, it is only 79 minutes long.

It's been almost 2 years since we last saw Don "The Dragon" Wilson on the site, and that review was another with scant Wilson, Scorpion King IV. I was looking at his bio on IMDb, and there is a bunch of stuff he has out now that I can do, like Diamond Cartel, which Ty has told me I need to watch, and Hitman Agency, which are both on Tubi. He's an interesting one, because he was at 39 movies, but we discovered IMDb had added films to his filmography that he wasn't actually in, like The Siege of Firebase Gloria, which meant he ended up losing tags. Now we have him at 38 films, so he's within striking distance again. We're also close to our 1300th post, so I figured we'd tie the two together to make it into a Wilson celebration. Who better to celebrate than one of the all-time greats? He's the reason Ty and I watched this, and he'll be the reason I do the sequel that's listed on IMDb. With guys this great, you gotta watch them all, and I've got some catching up to do.

Our hero of this passion piece/vanity project is Alan Delabie. If you go on his IMDb page, he has a series of fake magazine covers saying he's the best dressed man in the world. Let's not get carried away here, Alan. For me, I think Delabie would be great in a film helmed by Wilson as a member of his team. Give him a couple nice fight scenes, establish he's a dependable member of Wilson's crew, and maybe wrap with a death where he gets shot or stabbed--or both--and Wilson lifts his head off the ground and says "don't die on me man!" to which Delabie chokes out "finish the job!" then croaks. Maybe Wilson gets a little misty-eyed, but then nods, sets his head down, and moves onto the next scene. Could Delabie do that? Maybe direct and action direct some films where Wilson is the lead and he's a supporting character? I doubt it, so we'll see what the sequel to this looks like--at the very least, hopefully his best bodyguard in the world character will learn to pay attention when the person he's being paid to guard is tying their shoe!

In all these movies, I find someone with a smaller role to root for, and in this case it was "Rachel the Waitress" played by Natasha Killip. This poor young woman works as a server in a local cafe that looks more like a rec center, and is stuck dating a jerk who is so bad, she finds herself hitting on Delabie and complementing him on his jacket, which causes said boyfriend to crack foxy with Delabie, and get his ass kicked for his troubles. Later, when a bigger jerkoff, Edson, arrives, her jerkoff boyfriend can't help himself, and Edson kills that ass. Just trying to make it as a server in a cafe, she doesn't need all that BS, but maybe Edson did her a favor. I saw on IMDb that a sequel to this is coming, and Rachel the Waitress is in it, which I think is great, but maybe Delabie could get with the times and call her "Rachel the Server." Just a thought, but here's to you Rachel the Waitress, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, in our never ending saga over streamers, this film is only free on Tubi, which most of the time is a great deal, but when I went to get images for the review, Tubi had rolled out new features that disabled others, namely the search bar and My List. Normally that's not a big deal, because I could find this somewhere else, but it's not on anything else for free. The way I managed to get the movie qqueues up on Tubi was by clicking the link through the Letterboxd page. For low-budget indie filmmakers out there, let this be another lesson: try to get your films on multiple streamers, because you don't know when the one your movie's on will be down. I guess we can score another one for physical media.

But by the same token, Tubi will be fixed eventually, and you can get this on there for free. This is a fun one in the Miami Connection vein, but also gets you that much closer to being a Wilson completists, and who doesn't want that? Apparently a lot of people, because it doesn't have a lot of Letterboxd reviews, and we're only the second IMDb critic review. Oh, and Ty has watched it as well, because he and I covered it on episode 167 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27419829

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

The Skulls II (2002)

As we finish up the month of November, we're also finishing our look at 2000s DTV sequels to 90s thrillers with this sequel to The Skulls. I know, that one technically came out in 2000, but in talking with Ty from Comeuppance about what a good fourth film for this series would be, we thought this would be better than some of the others I was considering, so I'm cheating a bit. In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

The Skulls II has DTVC favorite Robin Dunne as a kid going to Yale(ish) who's kind of coasting through life, until his older brother gets him into the Skulls. As luck would have it, he witnesses Aaron Ashmore (not to be confused with his brother Shawn) drug a woman, who proceeds to fall off the roof to her death. Dunne investigates, but is dissuaded when his brother and a cross between Jordan Knight and John Taylor tells him it was a hoax, then gives him a Ducati sportbike. That should be the end of it, but the Jordan Knight/John Taylor guy doubles down as a power play, and that pisses Dunne off, causing him to solve the murder and bring everyone involved down.

Like the others we've looked at in this series, this works in a guilty pleasure time killer kind of way. Robin Dunne is exactly who you want in the lead, and Lindy Booth is great as the young woman who helps him get to the bottom of things. Also like the others, it borrows heavily from the first film, though at least this one references the first one, it's not a straight rip-off the way Wild Things 2 and Single White Female 2 were. There were two interesting twists in this that I liked. One, I liked that Dunne was ready to buy the hoax explanation for why the girl died, but the cross between Jordan Knight and John Taylor baddie had to overplay his hand and try to ruin Dunne's life as well, which is what caused Dunne to dig in and turn the tables. It was a unique motivational device. The second twist was the use of Aaron Ashmore instead of his brother Shawn, who had just come off of a small role in X-Men. Well-played movie. Finally, the 99-minute runtime had me worried, but there are 6+ minutes of credits, plus the resolution comes with about 15 minutes to go, with everything after just tying up loose ends, so it's not as bad as 99 minutes would seem. The only issue I had is this is currently only available to rent as far as I can tell, and I don't know if it's worth shelling out any money beyond what you're already paying for your various other streaming subscriptions, but if it ever does appear on one again, it's worth the time.

The Dunne-ster is back, after we saw him in the first film we looked at, Cruel Intentions 2. While that movie was off-beat and this was more serious, Dunne's unique mix of off-beat jokester, combined with savant--here he's discussing Goethe with Lindy Booth, while in Cruel Intentions 2 he was showing Amy Adams up on the piano--plus guy who can scheme and get shit done, makes him perfect for a role like this, not to mention that Canadian-ness that brings it all home. It's also that early-2000s thing that he does so perfectly, with an open button-up shirt over a T-shirt, an oversized leather jacket over that, and some Gap wide-leg jeans. You put anyone else in this role, and it's not going to work as well, which I think is why we love Robin Dunne here. In looking at his IMDb bio, one thing I didn't know was how many films he's directed. Many of them are Christmas movies, which is nice, but what would be better is if he directed himself in some more DTV sequels of 90s thrillers. Like what if he did a Skulls IV that takes place in the present, where he and Lindy Booth are adults with kids of their own--and maybe one of his kids joins the Skulls! Dunne-y baby, we can make magic here!

Speaking of Lindy Booth, she's one day younger than me. On her IMDb page she doesn't have her year listed with her birthday, but it is still in her bio. It's another reminder of how old I'm getting too, that actors my age are removing their birth years from their bios in order to get more work.I last saw her on Strange New Worlds, where she was playing an "old" friend of Captain Pike, despite her being a good six years younger than him. This kind of thing happened later that season, when Mia Kirshner played Spock's mother, despite being only 11 years older than Ethan Peck, who plays Spock. Either way, what was great about Lindy here, was she inhabited that trope we see in a lot of these films: she's the diligent student, "plainer" than her sexier friend (Ashley Tesoro), who Dunne is dating initially because she's sexier, but when the chips are down, Booth is the one Dunne can count on--but in case we weren't sure if she was sexy enough, she has to sexy herself up to distract the coroner so Dunne can get an official coroner's report on the dead girl, and it's like "oh hey, she's sexy too!" But then at the very end, she picks Dunne up in her drop-top VW bug to show that as sexy as she can be, she's the sensible option over his previous girlfriend. I think between her and Dunne, their careers are similar, though she managed more TV roles. It was almost like, because she was in the tier below Sarah Michelle Gellar or Jennifer Love Hewitt, when the roles dried up for them, she had already adapted her career so she never lost out on the roles she was already getting, if that makes sense.

I was curious about Skull and Bones, the secret society at Yale that The Skulls is based on. I listen to a podcast called "Knowledge Fight," that makes fun of Alex Jones, and on his show, Jones has all kinds of conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones, some of which he gets from crazy conspiracy theory books, some of which it sounds like he gets from movies like this, and some that he must make up on his own--like when he said that part of the initiation involves initiates having buckets of human crap dumped on them. The hosts of "Knowledge Fight" were like, how do you get buckets full of crap like that? Conspiracy theorists don't ask those kinds of questions, they just go with it. A few interesting things that I learned from the Wikipedia entry though: while originally they were all about WASPy members, recently they've been more diverse, allowing women and people of color--in fact in 2020 they had their first all non-white initiate group. Also, tax filings give us a sense of how much money they have, which may be around $17 million. While that's a lot, it's not enough to flood the bank accounts of new members, or have tentacles into all areas of society. So if one of their members drugged a lady friend and she fell off a roof, they wouldn't be trying to cover it up, they'd be cooperating with the authorities and distancing themselves from the offending member with the quickness. Without any of that though, we wouldn't have fun, guilty pleasure movies, would we?

Finally, while this is supposed to take place at a version of Yale, it's shot in Toronto. Of the top ten metro areas in North America, Toronto is one of two--Houston being the other--that I have never been to, but I've always wanted to check it out. Part of it is that there's the Blue Jays, and I want to see every Major League Baseball park; but part of it is just that it's Canada's biggest city, and I've never been to Canada before. Maybe I need to set some money aside and make it happen in 2025. Could I do it as a tax write-off? "For the DTVC, I'm studying the hometown of Robin Dunne." Imagine what that would open up if that worked: London to see where Gary Daniels is from, Brussels for JCVD, and then Stockholm for Dolph's home city? At some point you'd have that small, sweaty, balding, mustachioed caricature of an IRS agent with his receipts and tiny calculator at my house going over my deductions. "You flew first class to Stockholm?" "Well, Dolph is so tall, I figured he'd never fly coach, and I wanted to experience it as he would."

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is only an on demand rental here in the States, but if it comes up on a free streamer again, it's definitely worth checking out. It does what you need for a 90-minute guilty pleasure time killer, and don't let the 99-minute runtime scare you, it's not that bad.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278723

Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Single White Female 2: The Psycho (2005)

We continue our look at 2000s DTV sequels of 90s thrillers with this sequel to the early 90s classic(?) Single White Female. Out of all the films we're looking at, this had the biggest gap between the the first and the sequel, but I think the vibe is still the same. In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Tars Tarkas have covered this as well.

Single White Female 2: The Psycho, has She Spies alum Kristen Miller as Holly, a PR firm worker who, with her friend Jan (Brooke Burns), are competing to get a managerial position. That's when Holly hatches a plan with her Poor Man's Julian McMahon boyfriend (Todd Babcock) to win the PR job for his new restaurant opening. But Jan is more wily than Holly, and she sends Holly on a fake business trip to Chicago, while she beds the Poor Man's McMahon. Now Holly needs a new place to live, so she moves in with nice, shy nurse, Tess (Allison "Road" Lange--I added the "Road"). Turns out, Tess really is a nice girl after all, and they all live happily ever after--or Tess is "the psycho" and she does psycho stuff for the last half of the film.

I enjoyed this for what it was, a trashy guilty pleasure. Hot women in hot outfits in mid-2000s NYC stabbing each other in the back both literally and figuratively, while Poor Man's Julian McMahons and the manager of the Lake Edna KFC look on--that's right, Rif Hutton is back as another detective! (And it should be noted, Brooke Burns from this film was married to the real Julian McMahon at one time.) The thing is, I don't know if anyone involved, from the writers--who also did Wild Things 2--to the director, to the stars, thought they were doing anything else, and they still just kinda went for it, which I appreciate. It's not quite a Skin-a-max thriller, because no one really gets naked in it outside of some body doubles, it's more like let's do a low-budget thriller that plays on the Single White Female name and the popularity of Sex in the City, and see if anyone bites. By the same token, as fun as this is as a guilty pleasure, it doesn't have the iconic classic elements the original had. Steven Weber from Wings doesn't get it with a stiletto heel to the eye--in fact, there are no Wings cast members killed in this, they couldn't even be bothered to toss Roy out a window, or maybe push Fay down a flight of stairs. This just borrows as much as it can from that plot, and gives it to you in a low-budget, DTV fashion. As a free streamer I'd say go for it, especially if you dig this kind of thing or are with people you know who dig this kind of thing. If it's a rental, I say skip it.

I love Kristen Miller, so I was happy to see her here. I first remember her on USA High as Nicholas Guest's daughter, which was on USA in the late 90s while I was waiting for Highlander to come on--and this film features another USA High alum, James Madio. From there she was on one of my favorite syndicated shows, She Spies, but it looks like she never quite got beyond that--and a movie like this certainly wasn't going to help matters. She's gotten one-off TV appearances on shows like Mad Men and Dexter, but there's also a lot of The Dog Who Saved Halloween too. It looks like she'd given that all up to star in some indie projects like web series, but even that may be done, as she doesn't have anything on her IMDb bio since 2020, and nothing in production that's new. If that's the case, we'll always have She Spies... and this...

Would you look at that above? The fact that Miller continued on in the biz for another 15 years after seeing that this film's title screen looks like that is testament to her stick-to it-iveness. I mean the feeling you must have in the pit of your stomach if you're someone who worked on this film when you go to the premier or fire it up on DVD, and see that! Is that MS Paint? The greeting card template on Word? It looks like my friend and I making covers to our burned mix CDs in the late 90s. This was distributed by Sony too. Did anyone with them look at this? I have to guess not, otherwise they'd probably be like "come on guys, let's get a legitimate title screen up here." In all my years of doing this, I think this might be the worst one I've seen. And does the fact that "The Psycho" is in a different font in a different square mean they hadn't settled on "The Psycho" for it yet? What were some of the other ideas they had? "The Retread," or "The Cash Grab" or maybe "The Let's Hope Using the 'Single White Female' Name is Enough to Get Blockbuster to Buy Copies and HBO to Pick This Up". I guess that would've been too big to fit in the square.

For some reason, I got it into my head that this came out in 2008, but as I was watching it, the fashions didn't feel like 2008. How did I know that? Like if you asked me what the difference between 2005 and 2008 fashion was, I'd have no idea how to explain it to you, but I just knew it, and then I looked on IMDb and found out I was right. With next year being 20 years since this film came out, does that mean 2005 is considered vintage? Like I think when I was in high school in the 90s, 70s stuff was considered vintage, so that kind of tracks, right? I looked up the rule for cars, and it's 20 years for a classic car. So a 2005 Corolla is considered a classic car now? They said it's 45 for vintage, which means I'm vintage, but so is a '79 Oldmobile. So if movies and clothes follow the car model, then this is a classic, but it's not vintage yet.

Outside of Rif Hutton in Shotgun, I think the only other person in this who's been in another film on the site, was Brooke Burns when she did Titanic II. That means the most tagged... entity?... is McDonald's, who made another appearance, which brings us to 13 now. That's more than some Hall of Famers! I think if we put McDonald's in the Hall of Fame, that would be our Jumping the Shark moment, and unlike Happy Days, which had five or six seasons after that, many of which it was the number one show on TV, I think for me it would kill the DTVC. For a McDonald's update, on a recent trip up to New England to see my family, I got the new Chicken Big Mac while I was in South Station in Boston. Not great. The mix of the breaded chicken with the special sauce made it all taste like a Filet-o-Fish. On my way back I decided to just get some fries, and even those weren't that great. Am I going to need to tag another fast food place on the site now? I don't know if there's any I've seen as often as I've seen McDonald's in our films though. I guess I could just not tag any, but how much fun would that be?

While we ponder this question, it's time to wrap this up. I had to rent this on Comcast, but it looks like now it's on Prime, so if you have Prime, this isn't a horrible way to kill 90 minutes. It's good, schlocky, trashy fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448120

Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!