Finishing School

Norway is quickly becoming the master of the grounded disaster film. In 2015, The Wave received critical acclaim. . . three years later, the same creative team (including producer Are Heidenstorm and writers John Kåre Raake, Harald Rosenløw-Eeg) brought forth a sequel, The Quake, directed this time by John Andreas Andersen. If there was one complaint about the previous film, it is that there could have been a bit more depth in regard to the characters. Learning from their mistakes, The Quake takes place three years later. . . Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner) is deemed a hero by the country – though he does not feel one. Bogged down by the countless lives lost after the title wave hit the tourist town Geiranger, the now bearded man is in a fugue-like nervous state.

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.

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.