Sector 7
Sector 7
aka 7 gwanggu aka 7광구
2011
Written by Yun Je-gyun
Directed by Kim Ji-hun
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Okay, team, we’re going to get to the bottom of the question “Does this film have phallic and vaginal symbolisms, or is it just stupid?”
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Sector 7 is so by-the-numbers that if you squint really hard, you’ll learn how to count in Korean! Sector 7 decided that it wanted to take all the goodwill that The Host generated for Korean monster movies and throw it all away into the pit of despair, instead giving us a grab bag of scenes ganked from some of the most famous alien monster films of all time. Each scene is a roulette wheel spin random landing on what film they’re stealing from this time. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator, Leviathan, Lethal Weapon 3, probably other films I just didn’t care enough to remember. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any scene ripped directly from Alien 4. It’s almost as if Alien 4 is so bad no one should copy it…
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Wait, am I a penis or a vagina? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??
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But enough of what this films steals from, let’s go over what this film is. Sector 7 is Korea’s first 3D film, and was obviously filmed on a soundstage with the outside backgrounds CGIed in, giving it a weird visual nature. That combined with me watching a 2D transfer of the 3D film probably caused it to look less visually stunning than it is supposed to. But since there wasn’t really any iconic cinematography in the first place, it’s no big deal.
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Shoot to kill any and all phallic references!
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We get a prologue that is set in the long distant year of 1985, where a man investigating troubles with an underwater drill at the uncharted Sector 7 finds tiny floating jelly things, then horrible disaster strikes. But that horrible disaster factors nothing at all to the rest of the film, so ignore all that and let’s jump to 2011, where there is still an oil rig in Sector 7 and it is still uncharted despite the 16 years and the freaking oil rig that probably cost millions of dollars to build in the middle of nowhere. That logic continues into the rest of the film, but before that, let’s get to the cast…
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You don’t look like my vagina to me!
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I bet there are phallic references here!
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Ahn Seong-gi, CGI trainwreck, Cha Ye-ryeon, Ha Ji-won, Korea, Oh Ji-ho, Park Jeong-hak, Park Yeong-soo, Women who kick butt
Almighty Thor – Discount Puppet Explosion 411 – Episode 110
It’s Discount Puppet Explosion 411! Two teams battle to review B-movies.
In this episode, Team Bastards deals with Thor. Not the big budget Thor that was boring and bland, but the low-rent Thor that has guns and whines all the time. But there’s dinosaurs! And giant dogs! And Richard Grieco! And some chick! Will Whiny Thor make Team Bastards declare war against Thursdays? Find out!
Categories: Movies, Video Reviews Tags: Asylum, CGI trainwreck, Cody Deal, Dinosaurs, Discount Puppet Explosion 411, Kevin Nash, mockbuster, Patricia Velasquez, Richard Grieco, SciFi Channel, Video Reviews
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
aka Di Renjie
2010
Directed by Tsui Hark
What they say: This is Tsui Hark’s best film in years, it’s one of the best films of 2010, Tsui Hark, Tsui Hark, Tsui Hark!
What you really need to know: Andy Lau gets into a kung fu fight with CGI deer.
Do you like yo-yos? Yo-yos go up and down, and so does Detective Dee. Some sequences in Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame are awesome, but other parts of the film are embarrassing and make you wonder why people were lavishing praise upon it.
If you’ve read any book on Hong Kong cinema that came out in the 90′s (which is when most of the books started appearing in the US), then you remember every single one had chapters on Tsui Hark. Tsui Hark was one of the Hong Kong New Wave directors that shook the industry to the core, and helped modernize Hong Kong film. Many of his earlier films are classics, though he had a few misfires. But even as the industry changed, Tsui Hark has seemed incapable of making film that is watchable since the mid-90′s. Those Jean-Claude Van Damme films were terrible, the Zu Warriors redux was boredom, and Seven Swords is a film so long that no one has ever gotten to the end of it. Despite all the technological achievements, Tsui Hark just wasn’t making good films anymore, and no amount of technology can change that. While Detective Dee isn’t a great film, it is at least the most watchable Tsui film since Black Mask, and something you should eventually get around to watching. You know, when it’s raining outside or something.
With Tsui Hark in the director’s chair, we are at least assured the film will look good, and it does. The cinematography is top notch. Elaborate CGI effects are needed to create ancient Chinese cities, palaces, giant Buddha statues, and underground meeting places – some are more believable than others, but you always know you are looking at a bunch of 1′s and 0′s in picture form. We do give props to action director Sammo Hung, as the actions sequences are the best parts of the film.
The stylized elements Tsui loves sometimes help the film, and sometimes hurt. As the opening scrawl is stylized to appear and disappear in wisps of smoke (which is nice), but a problem is the crawl is Star Warsian in length. In fact, the long text openings of Reefer Madness and Alone in the Dark are brought to mind. We are forced to read like half a sentence at a time, and have to wait for each piece one by one. It is what I like to call “annoying”.
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Carina Lau Ka-Ling, CGI trainwreck, Deng Chao, Hong Kong, Li Bing-Bing, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon, Sammo Hung, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Tsui Hark
Psycho Shark
Psycho Shark
aka Jaws in Japan
2009
Directed by John Hijiri
Written by Yasutoshi Murakawa
Psycho Shark is the worst thing to come from Japan since shotacon. Don’t Google that at work. Or ever. And don’t watch Psycho Shark ever, because it frakking sucks. It sucks even at 2.5x speed, and the same amount of things happen, which is nothing. Since large portions of the film is one character watching other characters on video and fast forwarding, perhaps the film is telling us what needs to be done. I answered the call, but I still had to watch Psycho Shark, so the effort was for naught.
That shark sure is psycho! This is the movie where the shark stabs someone in the shower.
Okay, that’s the easy jokes, neither of which are true, so let’s get to the actual review of this plotless piece of shark dung. Originally called Jaws in Japan, the title was changed to Psycho Shark to cash in on the lucrative psycho demographics. Or something. Maybe the distributors thought people would avoid the film because it was Japanese, and took the foreign name out of the title Except the Japanese bikini babes are the main non-shark selling point, so that makes little sense. I’ll give this as much thought as to why they changed the name as the producers of Psycho Shark took in making Psycho Shark a good film: none!
What we have here is a found footage mess masquerading as a shark attack film with lots of attractive Japanese chicks in bikinis. How unique, as it is almost impossible to find Japanese chicks in bikinis anywhere in this day and age of the internet.
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Airi Nakajima, CGI trainwreck, Japan, John Hijiri, Mika Inagaki, Nonami Takizawa, shark attack mania!, Yasutoshi Murakawa
The Vanquisher
The Vanquisher
aka Suay…Samurai aka Final Target
2009
Directed and written by Manop Udomdej
The Vanquisher starts out confusing and just gets more and more incoherent until you give up and go back to that one thing…what’s it called…reading! So just read this instead of watching The Vanquisher. Director (and writer) Manop Udomdej has graced TarsTarkas.NET before with his film Lizard Woman, and a few of the stars from that one make their way into this film. Sadly, the gecko women are not going to pop up and bit random characters. The Thai title Suay … Samurai translates to “Beautiful Samurai”. Because when you think “Samurai”, you think of hot Thai women.
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HELP! The slow-motion rain burns!
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The Vanquisher‘s troubles began before the film was even edited, when an actress in the film named “Amy” Chotiros Suriwong wore a dress at the 2007 Thailand National Film Awards that was so revealing that the entire nation of Thailand went insane. People couldn’t stop talking about how they were shocked, shocked that women had breasts. The government was overthrown 17 times, riots filled the streets, and Tony Jaa became a monk. So executive producer Somsak Techaratanaprasert chopped her out of the film, despite the fact this film is based on the premise that you will be staring at the breasts of the actresses in it.
It was obvious that this film was made with foreign distribution in mind. The film is mixed with English, Japanese, and a smattering of Thai. Why they bothered, I am not certain, as the English is so awful I can’t believe it was actually written and spoken by anyone who has heard English before. The sentence structure was beyond awkward, and even what I could pick up on seemed to be random statements. I needed the subtitles just to understand what was being said, unfortunately that was no help as the subtitles were autotranslated from either Thai or Chinese and were nothing more than broken sentence fragments. At least until halfway through the flick, when they just gave up entirely on having subtitles. As I have said before at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles. So I made up a story about how all those chicks were lesbians and it suddenly got far more interesting. You would think the white actors who are obvious native English speakers would at least be understandable, but you would be wrong. They must have had no input on the script as to writing sentences that people would actually say, or they don’t care and were just looking for a payday. Payday may be an awesome candy bar, but it made an awful time understanding the film.
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I’ll take Psycho Women for $800, Alex
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That’s sexual harassment. And I don’t have to take it!
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Sharktopus
Sharktopus
2010
Directed by Declan O’Brien
Written by Mike MacLean
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I hate it when people don’t leash their dogs at the beach
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Sharktopus is Roger Corman’s latest, having found a new outlet to distribute his films through the SciFi Channel (never SyFy, never!), previous Corman films including Cyclops, Dinoshark, Supergator, and Dinocroc vs. Supergator. Thanks to me moving to a location without SciFi Channel at the moment, I have been slacking off on watching the newer flicks that don’t pop on DVD first, but Sharktopus is a special case so I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who I traded a rock shaped like Sarah Jessica Parker to for a copy of Sharktopus he recorded off of TV. This is the new economy. I think he got the better end of the deal, but then it’s easy to find rocks shaped like horses– I mean, Sarah Jessica Parker.
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Hey, I have glasses AND a ponytail now, that mean’s I’m the smartest one in here
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Sharktopus has also ridden the wave of internet interest, just by the name “Sharktopus”. Buzz started immediately, with people trying to figure out what the creature would look like. There had been a recent string of SciFi Channel movies that have produced internet buzz, including Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, Megapihrana, and MegaMegaMegaMegaMegaMega earthworm vs Giant Mega Vampire Cow. Granted, internet films don’t really have a big history of succeeding (see Snakes on a Plane) but for a low-budget creature flick on a cable channel, the buzz actually works. It has even succeeded in making an ever-increasing amount of films with ridiculous creature names and films where ridiculous creatures battle ridiculous creatures. Have the films themselves been any good? That’s more of a mixed bag.
But forget the rest of the flicks, this review is about Sharktopus! So let’s judge it against its peers, other SciFi Channel films. Compared to the rest, the acting is pretty darn awful. We usually expect the acting to not be very good, but Sharktopus is a step beyond the normal SciFi Channel mediocrity, even the bit players are worse than the stock bit players. You got to hand it to Bulgarian extras – they aren’t as bad as the spring break extras they got for this one. Since Sharktopus likes to set up different kills, we see a lot of the minor actors for an extended period of time. This becomes disadvantageous as many of them couldn’t act their way out of a paper sharktopus.
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Mega Sharktopus vs. Herbie the Love Bug
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The good is we see the monster a LOT more than usual, and that’s awesome. Because we want monster monster monster! This also makes it more satisfying when the bad actors get killed.
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Eric Roberts – now with 95% more smug
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: CGI trainwreck, Declan O'Brien, Eric Roberts, Kerem Bursin, Liv Boughn, Mike MacLean, Roger Corman, Sara Malakul Lane, SciFi Channel
