Sol Levante (2020)

I’ve come across a lot of movies.  There are maybe a dozen or so in theaters at any given time.  I also have some sets of movies I’ve been reviewing.   In addition to that, I have access to stuff from my cable provider, as well as Hulu and Netflix.  Most of them are good.  Some are bad.  There is occasionally one that I really don’t know what to make of.

Sol Levante is a short anime, clocking in at only four minutes.  It seems nonsensical, as there’s no dialogue, nor are there any title cards.  It’s just a woman moving through various scenes.  I’m not sure if she’s moving through dimensions or teleporting or what.  It almost looks like a coming attraction, which is a shame.  I’d probably watch the movie that it would have advertised.  As it is, it looks like someone animated an LSD trip.

From what I’ve read, it was meant to be seen in 4K.  I don’t know how many people are going to have access to that.  I’m certain some will.  I watched it on my laptop, as I’m not going to hunt down an HD screen just to watch this.  There will always be a better screen to watch it on.

Sol Levante will likely serve as a test run for future projects.  I would think it took more money and effort, per minute, than your average anime.  I have to wonder if Netflix will be willing to invest in these projects, considering that they charge by the month.  There are going to be purists, who prefer traditional anime and those who probably wouldn’t notice, either because they don’t have the eye or the equipment for it.

Visually, it’s spectacular.  But there’s no real plot to speak of.  There’s no beginning or end.  There’s no satisfaction of finding out what happens at the end.  It’s almost like the movie was canceled after making a few minutes of footage and this is all they had to offer.  It’s the very definition of eye candy.  It looks pretty and doesn’t require much thought.  I am genuinely hoping that a larger project comes of this.  I want to see what happens.


IMDb page

Parallels (2015)

I remember being excited when Sliders first aired.  It was a show about four people who are thrust into different universes, each with a slightly different set of circumstances.  One week might show a world where the United States was still a British dependency.  Another might show a world where advanced technology had been banned.  The concept wasn’t new.  Lots of movies and TV shows have used the concept before and since.

When I saw Parallels, I expected something similar.  Instead of a wormhole, we have a building.  We have three friends, two of whom are brother and sister, going from world to world with a stranger.  The first is a post-apocalyptic world.  It turns out that their father nuked the surrounding area.  They manage to escape to a futuristic world.  The date is the same, but technology has advanced quite a bit beyond what we have.  It’s apparent from graffiti inside the building that there are all sorts of other worlds.  (In one, the attack on the Twin Towers happened on a different date. In another, all live births are twins.)

I had wondered why I hadn’t heard of this airing on TV, as it gives the impression of being a TV pilot.  It turns out that Netflix produced it and has it available streaming.  It could very well be made into a TV series.  On that note, I see a lot of similarities with Sliders.  You have two children finding out that they weren’t born on the Earth that they were raised on.  They’re trying to seek out their mother to find their home world.  (In sliders, they were trying to find both parents.)  They also gain control over which world they go to next.

With Netflix producing original content, I could see this being made into a TV series.  (Since the movie was released earlier this year, I don’t know how long it will be before we hear of any news.)  Constance Wu, who plays the stranger, is apparently staring on Fresh Off the Boat.  I don’t know how that would affect anything.  She wouldn’t be the first character to be recast and/or replaced when a movie was made into a TV series.

The main problem would be the similarity to Sliders.  I’d imagine that there would be a similar slew of alternate worlds being used as social commentary.  The main difference would be that other story lines are introduced from the onset.  Sliders kind of jumped the shark when they started having Cromags and the search for the brothers’ real parents/home world.

Another problem I’ve had with alternate universes is how many of the main characters are in the other worlds.  Yes, I realize that it’s easier to use the same actors.  However, do you realize the odds of the same sperm meeting up with the same egg?  The slightest variation could produce a totally different person or not result in a pregnancy at all.  I always found it odd that each world the Sliders visited had most, if not all, of the main characters.  I’d hope that if this movie is made into a show, it might rely on this less.  Given that there’s the potential for a whole new, potentially expansive, mythology, I might very well get my wish.  That is, assuming it gets made into a series at all.

IMDb page

How to Find Really Bad Movies

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Yahoo! Articles account.

Everyone has a list of favorite movies. Ask a friend and they can give you their top five or ten. Sites like NetFlix and Amazon have top hundred lists. But what do you do if you want to find a really bad movie? There are some that are known for being bad, like many of Ed Wood's films. Plan 9 From Outer Space has become famous just for being bad. After reviewing many, many movies on Epinions.com, I began to wonder where I could find the worst movies.

In case you're wondering, if I see a movie that is truly considered bad, I sometimes have to watch it just to see how bad it is. Some are considered entertaining while others are held up as an example of what not to do. Occasionally, I'll even take it as a challenge. I have to watch the movie just to know and even review, myself.

Neither Amazon nor NetFlix has an official bottom 100 list, which is understandable. Amazon sells movies and NetFlix rents them. I doubt that either site wants to waste their time compiling a list of movies that you probably wouldn't want to watch anyway. One user on Amazon did put together a list of their own, located here. This list doesn't seem to be endorsed by Amazon, though.

Rotten Tomatoes is a good place to start. It's technically a review aggregator, meaning that they compile reviews from other sites and give them a score based on the percentage of positive reviews. I've always had a hard time finding a bottom 100 list, although their Wikipedia page does have a list of movies with 0%, meaning that no one liked them.

One site that I really like is badmovies.org. One man has made it his quest to watch and review bad movies every so often. The reviews are well written and there's a wide variety of bad movies. Some, like Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe, I had already seen. Others, like Winterbeast, I had not and had only found out about through the web site.

Internet Movie Database does have a bottom 100 list of their own, located here. The list is the result of IMDb user ratings, so it will vary from time to time. Right now, the list doesn't seem to have many movies I've seen before, so I can't really attest to how good the list is, but I may get around to renting a few if I run out of stuff from badmovies.org.

If you run out of movies from these sites, you can check Wikipedia's list. This has a few that are considered bad for various reasons, although I think a lot of them appear on other lists. With the Wikipedia list, though, you can get much more detailed information.

If that fails, one good way to get some bad movies is to check your on-demand selection if you have access to that. Check to see if there's a free section. A few of the movies are going to be good, but many of the movies in free section are there because your provider doesn't have to pay much for them if anything.

Likewise, you may also be able to find packs of movies ranging from 10 to 100+ movies. Again, these tend to be public-domain movies that the company selling the sets didn't have to pay for. If you can find one of these at a library or very cheap at a yard sale or thrift store, these may be a good idea. I'd use these if you absolutely have to get them or if you can find a collection of relatively decent movies.

If you're looking for bad movies, these ideas should keep you going for a while.

Adrift in Tokyo

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

 

I remember thinking once that there were so many movies out there that it might be impossible to watch them all within a single lifetime.  If this was the case, how would you know what was worth watching?  This isn’t even taking into account having to pay to buy or rent the movies.  (For that matter, a good number of movies probably aren‘t even available.)  Netflix helps with that a little.  I’ve been able to stream a lot of movies that I may not have even heard of otherwise.  This is how I came across Adrift in Tokyo.  It’s one of those oddball movies that I just don’t hear about.

The movie starts with Fumiya Takemura, a student that owes a loan shark 840,000 yen.  (That’s about $8,260.)  Said loan shark sends Aiichiro Fukuhara to collect.  Fumiya has three days to pay up…or else.  Aiichiro returns the next day to make Fumiya a proposition.  Aiichiro will give Fumiya a million yen if Fumiya accompanies Aiichiro on a walk.  The walk may take three days or it may take a month.  Fumiya has a hard time believing it’s that simple.  Why would Aiichiro need the company, anyway?  The again, Fumiya is being offered more money than he needs, not to mention that Aiichiro has Fumiya’s driver’s license and student ID.  So, their road trip on foot begins.

You’re probably wondering where the story comes in.  The movie is 1:41, which means that there’s a lot of walking.  Why would a collector even be willing to make this offer?  There are a few side stories.  We learn about the families that Aiichiro and Fumiya never had.  (Aiichiro wanted a son and Fumiya was adopted.)  They also don’t take a direct path, stopping at places that Aiichiro visited with his wife.  After some prodding Fumiya even tracks down a girl he once knew.

It’s not the kind of movie Redbox would have and I don’t think I would have rented it from Netflix.  I probably would have kept putting off getting the movie on DVD.  It’s an odd movie, but it’s one of those movies where the oddities work.  You have two people thrown together by circumstance and they become more friendly as they travel together.  It’s almost like Planes, Trains & Automobiles, where there’s no real antagonist.  (Yes, Aiichiro could be seen as the antagonist, but he just doesn’t seem as mean and rough as a collector should.)

It’s the side stories and random events that make it worth watching.  In one scene, Fumiya follows some strange guy playing a guitar.  This almost gets him in trouble with Aiichiro.  (Fumiya is supposed to wait for Aiichiro while Aiichiro looks at some art he’d rather be missing out on.)  Aiichiro even has a place to stay, as he once posed as a woman’s husband for a wedding once, which is a whole other story.

I definitely recommend watching the movie, especially if you have Netflix streaming.  I could even see watching the movie a second time.  One of my brothers lived in Japan for three years, although not in Tokyo.  I may watch again the next time my he’s in town.

IMDb page

Adrift in Tokyo ('Ten Ten' - Miki Satoshi, 2007) English-subtitled

Blood Angels/Thralls (2005) Movie Review

I have to admit that I’m a ‘sucker’ for female vampires.  Since I have access to streaming movies, I can pick out movies that I might not otherwise rent.  I could tell that Blood Angels, a.k.a. Thralls, was going to be one of those movies that I might not otherwise have rented.  (I almost didn’t make it through the introductory voiceover.  If you want to use a deep voice, find someone with a deep voice.)

The movie is about several half-vampire women, called thralls, that want to escape from their evil vampire captor, Mr. Jones.  Thralls can’t fly or turn humans or anything, which makes it difficult.  However, Marlene finds a possible way out.  She manages to steal Mr. Jones’s Big Book of Vampire Stuff, Latin Edition, and finds a passage about some ritual to make a thrall into a full vampire.  With one exception, the women manage to escape.

Cut to a woman waiting at what I’m assuming was supposed to be a bus station.  Her name is Ashley and she’s waiting for her big sister, Leslie, to pick her up.  It’s late.  It’s dark.  Of course, several guys try to attack her.  Leslie shows up just in time to attack and drain them of blood.  Yes, Leslie is one of the thralls.  (Ashley doesn’t see any of the blood sucking.  She doesn’t know and won’t find out until later.)

They go to a large building that the women are using for raves.  There, a wide assortment of people are waiting to get in.  Some do.  Some don’t.  They’re collecting some sort of emotional energy for the ceremony, which has to be held on the Winter solstice at midnight.  Just as the moment is about to come, Mr. Jones shows up and starts wreaking havoc.  Turns out that it wasn’t that easy.  The ceremony is to bring over a demon.  As you might expect, the ladies win.  (Well, three of them win.  The rest aren’t as lucky.)

The voice over was the first of many things to bother me.  As much as I like vampire movies, I hate it when vampires don’t reflect.  I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll probably mention it again.  They’re physical objects that light interacts with.  What is it about being a vampire that makes their photons not interact with reflective surfaces?  I’m sure that there was some reason.  As far as I can tell, it’s currently only used as a plot device to let other characters know that there’s a vampire around, and even that’s far fetched.  How is it that the protagonist always has a mirror and is looking at just the right angle?

Most of the actors were in other movies, but the acting is just a little over the top.  I think everyone involved knew that this wasn’t going to be a serious movie.  Most of the action is gratuitous and/or exaggerated.  You also have gratuitous nudity, some of which I’m not complaining about.  Add to this some really corny one-liners and you have a B movie that you’ll either love or hate.

There further into the movie, the less obvious the explanations were.  Towards the end, the writers were throwing things in at random.  (Leslie and another thrall figure that if a thrall is half a vampire, two thralls could make a whole vampire.)  I think at this point, the writers knew that very few viewers would remain.

I’m not saying that I don’t recommend the movie.  Several of the women were pretty hot and made the movie worth watching.  Unfortunately, many of the scenes are dark and you can’t always get a great view of the women.  In fact, one of the women has snakes that come out of her chest.  That alone may make the movie for some people.  The bad news is that it’s one brief scene late in the movie.  All I know is that I’m glad I was able to get it streaming through Netflix.

IMDb page