Beauty on Duty
Beauty on Duty
aka Mei lai muk ling
2010
Directed and Written by Wong Jing
Wong Jing takes Miss Congeniality and 9000 characters and mixes them in a blender to pump out his latest wacky romcom (that’s cool people slang for “romantic-comedy”) that is so Wong Jing you’re gonna wong your jing. Or something like that. Like all Wong Jing romcoms, we got more potential couples and love octagons than you can shake a stick at. We have such familiar situations as the people who were lovers in school and then went their separate ways for 20 years, will they get together again now that they have reunited? Don’t forget the people who had crushes on other people and followed them around hiding behind trees. How will they find love? Let’s also give honor to the couple that is the main male character and the main female character. Because, they pretty much have to get together despite the super rich pop star wandering around in the middle of it all.
As there are so many characters and we’re trying to keep the length of this review to a passable level, the Roll Call will only list some of the cast, the rest will be brought up as the plot overview demands.
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: alligators & crocodiles, Charlene Choi Cheuk-Yin, Cheung Tat-Ming, Fan Siu-Wong, Hong Kong, Hui Siu-Hung, Jeannette Leung Ching-Kok, Jim Chim Sui-Man, Lam Suet, Lu Yi, Maggie Li Man-Kwan, Pu Hua-Ting, Qi Li-Li, Samantha Ko Hoi-Ning, Sammy Leung Chi-Kin, Sandra Ng Kwun-Yu, William Chan Wai-Ting, Wong Jing, Xie Na
Assault Girls
Assault Girls
aka Asaruto garuzu
2009
Written and Directed by Mamoru Oshii
Hot chicks shooting up giant sand whales in a post apocalyptic future should be an easy sell. Except for the fact the film isn’t really about that and is instead just a video game level. The film is short as heck, but that doesn’t stop it from being filled with lots of padding from the worst opening narration experience since Alone in the Dark to many scenes of people just walking in the desert.
Add the above to the fact the women speak badly accented English muffled behind breathing masks and we got a film that is more annoying than anything else. Luckily, parts of the film are just in Japanese, and thanks to our impatient nature we have the import DVD cuz we aren’t gonna wait for it to finally get around to having an official US release. But at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!
The film is connected to Mamoru Oshii’s 2001 film Avalon, as the game the players are playing is Avalon(f), and there are references to other established canon from the Avalon film. Mamoru Oshii is probably best known in the west for directing Ghost in the Shell, one of the films that everyone who was into anime talked about all the time until I started ignoring everyone who was into anime. Now I just ignore everyone, because I’m too cool for school ::puts on shades::
Instead of being cool and dealing with the fact there is a movie filled with hot chicks fighting monsters, Assault Girls instead tries to impress us, then tries to give us a feast for the eyes, and finally delivers the goods. Except the only impression is of boring psychobabble, the feast for the eyes is more like a famine, and the goods arrive late and in small quantities. I can’t recommend enough that you don’t bother with Assault Girls. The best thing I can say about it is that it was mercifully short. But don’t take my word for it, follow along for yourself!
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Hinako Saeki, Japan, Mamoru Oshii, Meisa Kuroki, Rinko Kikuchi, We don't need no stinking subtitles, Yoshikazu Fujiki
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl
aka Kyuketsu Shojo tai Shojo Furanken
2009
Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (hereafter VGxFG due to our crippling laziness in both typing and copy/pasting the movie title) is from the same Japanese goremasters that brought us The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and Hypertrophy Genitals Girl. That’s the movie where the girl has the giant genitals. It won six Oscars. Yoshihiro Nishimura is a special effects expert who has directed several of the gore flicks, while Naoyuki Tomomatsu is a director and writer who also produces a lot of gore flicks such as Stacy and Zombie Self-Defense Force . VGxFG is based on a manga I haven’t read because I only read scifi novels published around the time my mom was born I get from used book stores. I also read books about McBroom’s Farm, but there were never and Vampire Girls fighting Frankenstein Girls. Maybe some of his kids were vampires or Frankensteins, he had like a million of them and also ran a zoo at one point besides the farm where I bet the Silver-Tailed Teakettler fought the Sidehill Gouger.
If you like gore and splatter effects and CGI blood, then this movie has that stuff and you probably already at least know about it. But maybe you haven’t bothered to rent it from NetFlix yet and are deciding on if you should see it or requesting Goonies one more time. And that is where TarsTarkas.NET can help. First of all, go get Goonies from a used DVD store, you can probably get it for like $5 thanks the the economic apocalypse. Second, give us $5 as well. This doesn’t help you, but it helps us. Everyone wins! (Everyone at TarsTarkas.NET!)
VGxFG is much like the Twilight saga, in that there are two specially powered teenagers fighting over the heart of a normal teenagers. Sure, the sexes are reversed, and the werewolf is a Frankenstein monster now, but it is similar. And no one sits in a window for four months while some generic alt rock blares in the background about possibilities. Come to think of it, VGxFG is nothing like Twilight. Forget I said anything!
Let’s get the Roll Call out of the way before I devote another paragraph to how VGxFG is exactly like Lethal Weapon 3…
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Eri Otoguro, Japan, Japanese Schoolgirls, Kanji Tsuda, Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Sayaka Kametani, Takashi Shimizu, Takumi Saito, vampires, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Yukie Kawamura
