The very Italian giallo meets burgeoning blaxsploitation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the 1972 crime mystery Tropic of Cancer (sometimes also referred to as Death in Haiti or Peacock’s Palace), directed by Giampaolo Lomi and Edoardo Mulargia (both also co-write along with star Anthony Steffen). A couple on the rocks, Fred and Grace Wright (Gabriele Tinti and Anita Strindberg), make their way to the island paradise to seemingly rekindle their relationship... yet the husband also plans on meeting up with long unseen friend Doctor Williams (Anthony Steffen). Unbeknownst to them (or is it), the M.D. and veterinarian by day and scientist by night (this guy can do everything) has discovered a rather desirable aphrodisiacal hallucinogenic drug formula that everyone is out to get – some legitimately, others not so much.
Coming off a bit like an Asian version of a Quentin Tarantino/Guy Richie feature, First Love (2019) finds iconic Japanese director Takashi Miike (now with over one hundred films under his belt) in his favourite playground, fusing violence, comedy, crime, and romance together in a most entertaining way. An intricate ballet of characters shot at the pace of a hockey game, Leo (Masataka Kubota) is a lonesome boxer. . . an abandoned young man whose only skill is being a pugilist. Taking a limp-wristed punch during a bout, he unexpectedly crumples to the ground like a baby who has just realized that he can walk for the very first time. Medical investigation shows a tumour on the back of his brain – a death warrant. Seeing a street fortune teller (Bengal) soon after, he is frustrated at the man’s two views: one – that he is a healthy young man; and two – that he needs to have a cause and help people.
Like a copycat killer, it is somehow unusual and rather suspicious that anytime a good film idea hits production, it seems like there is another similar project coming down the pipeline. . . sometimes referred to as ‘twin films’, countless examples exist – White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, Hitchcock and The Girl, The Prestige and The Illusionist, Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, Darkest Hour and Churchill, The Descent and The Cave (anyways, you get the idea). Another intriguing example finds the horror classic Don’t Look Now having a doppelganger in the 1972 Aldo Lado directed giallo Who Saw Her Die? – though don’t jump to conclusions as to which one is the knock-off. Released a year prior to the 1973 feature, Who Saw Her Die? also finds itself set in the eerily beautiful city of Venice, where a couple is dealing with the death of their child. With numerous similarities, like a water-set funeral and an intimate sex scene, and though the set up and settings are similar, in many ways, they are separate entities.
When I first started watching the excellent British series Misfits (somewhat scarily, about a decade ago), I was completely impressed with their lineup of talented young stars (all playing delinquents forced to do community service – who also happen to have superpowers). I expected many of them to go somewhere, and I have not been disappointed – Joseph Gilgun is arguably the most entertaining part of the American show Preacher (as Cassidy); Iwan Rheon scared millions of viewers as the vile Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones; Antonia Thomas is a main player on the hit series The Good Doctor (as Dr. Claire Browne); while my favourite character on the series was brought to vivid life by Robert Sheehan (who played the hilarious Nathan). A man of many dimensions, I then followed him to the Irish series Love/Hate, a role that showed his range as a very serious young man working in the Dublin underground crime scene. Also, over the years, he has had some promising roles in films such as The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Messenger, Geostorm, Mute, Mortal Engines, and, currently has found his groove in North America on the acclaimed Netflix series The Umbrella Academy.
A sequel that picks up almost immediately where its predecessor left off, Police Story 2 finds our likeable officer, Chan Ka Kui (Jackie Chan) in a rather precarious position. . . reprimanded for his blatant destruction of the mall (in order to catch the villains at the end of the previous feature), not only is he demoted, but he also learns that all of his hard work was for naught – for drug kingpin Mr. Chu (Yuen Chor), who was supposed to spend life behind bars, has been released by a trifecta of doctors who have claimed that he only has three months left to live. Yet, this is only the beginning. . . throw in a spiralling out of control blackmailing case (in which a company’s holdings are being bombed), and more issues between Ka Kui and his spunky girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung), and we can easily say that he has his plate full.
Watching Mario Bava’s first credited directorial effort, Black Sunday (1960), is like experiencing those magical Universal monster movies from the 1930s and 40s for the first time. . . with a palpable atmosphere and a rich grounding of very specific lore (that would influence future films for decades to come – much like vampire lore, the crucifix still plays a crucial role), this fantastical tale of witchcraft cannot be easily forgotten. Opening with the gruesome genesis scene (a sort of flashback to the seventeenth century) that will carry the movie, a stunning witch has been cornered along with her servile lover Igor Javutich (Arturo Dominici). . . the clerics, along with the pitchfork and fire wielding townsfolk, know of only one way to vanquish the evil foe – to first pierce her face with a mask version of an iron maiden and then burn her at the stake. . . but, soon after accomplishing the first task, a rain like no other scatters the horde (as if the storm itself was summoned by Satan), the priests forced to bury the pair separately with a number of safeguards in place.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if fifty savage prisoners attempted to attack a single man in a prison stall, then 2014's The Raid 2 might just be for you. Before moving on, to let you in on how they shot the scene, a simply genius technique is used where the stall walls are on hinges – so that the handheld camera can get in and around the developing action. Written, edited, and directed by Gareth Evans, this Indonesian import is a sequel to 2011's The Raid: Redemption (also created by Evans), starting up a mere two hours after the previous film finished. Miraculously, you really do not need to see the original, as this story is easy to catch on to, despite its complexity when compared to the 2011 feature. If Redemption was shot in the style of a non-stop action video game, its sequel is as if John Carpenter (Escape From New York) and David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) came together with Martin Scorsese to create a twisty story along the lines of The Departed.