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Babysitter’s Black Book
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Babysitter’s Black Book (Review)

August 11, 2015By

Babysitter’s Black Book

Babysitter’s Black Book
2015
Written by Richard Kletter and Michele Samit
Directed by Lee Friedlander
Babysitter’s Black Book
Lifetime Channel’s Babysitter’s Black Book is the timeless tale young, innocent girls who go from the Babysitter’s Club to the Redlight Special Club, and then get a heaping helping of consequences and lessons learned. The girls deal with the new-found freedom and sense of thrills from getting lots of money, but having to look the wives in the eyes and hide everything from their parents and the school, while the drama bomb is about to go nuclear. The big question is which cast member will wind up either dead, or worse than dead. That answer is sort of left up to the viewer, as the fates aren’t as catastrophic as the typical Lifetime girls gone prostitute film (such as Sugar Daddies), but they still aren’t things your normal teenage girl wants to happen to them.

Ashley Gordon’s (Spencer Locke, Detention) school business project “Family Buddies” is basically a super version of the Babysitter’s Club repackaged as helper buddies/tutors for overworked parents. Her friends all earn money as employees, there is Janet Moss (Lauren York) the sporty girl, Gilli (Steffani Brass) the arty girl, and Rachel (Angeline Appel) the all-around star who the dad’s all seem to love. Hm… Yes, Rachel has taken it upon herself to expand Family Buddies’ business model, and soon ropes Janet into helping as well. Rachel and Janet are the more sexually experienced girls, while Gilli and Ashley are more reserved and have no intention of going along with their schemes (but don’t tell them to knock it off, either).
Babysitter’s Black Book
Ashley is the overachieving scholar about to become valedictorian (beating the rival girl, rich bitch Harper (Ashley Dulaney)), and worried about college admissions essays. That becomes small fries when the bombshell of her mom’s business failing and her parents raiding her college fund happens. Desperate for money (she doesn’t want to go to… GASP… COMMUNITY COLLEGE!), Ashley lets herself get seduced by the promises of dad Mark (Ryan McPartlin), who promises to help with books and tuition to his expensive alma matter, and all she has to do it let him go to pound town on her. After Mark tries to control her life and she drops him, Ashley is now in on Rachel and Janet’s sex for money business model. Gilli tries to go along with it, but ends up unable to do so and flees with her dignity.
Babysitter’s Black Book

Black Coal Thin Ice 白日焰火
InGood, Movie Reviews

Black Coal, Thin Ice (Review)

August 3, 2015By

Black Coal, Thin Ice

aka 白日焰火 aka Bai Ri Yan Huo aka Daylight Fireworks
Black Coal Thin Ice 白日焰火
2014
Written and directed by Diao Yinan
Black Coal Thin Ice 白日焰火
In the bleak urban atmosphere of a rapidly industrializing China, body parts begin to appear at a coal processing plant mixed in with the incoming coal shipments. Those thought responsible are found, and after a bloody conclusion, things seemed solved. Years later a new crop of body parts appear, and things get darker from there. A disgraced cop who worked on the original case must put aside his own demons long enough to figure out the who-done-it before he becomes the next set of parts showing up in coal plants.

Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice paints a murder mystery backdropped by the new urban China, the landscape coated in layers of snow that mask the grit below. Glowing neon signs provide an aurora of human habitation among the snow, lighting many of the key locations. But the glow doesn’t show the warmth of humanity, it’s an unnatural presence that makes the night time illumination otherworldly. The inhabitants have their own secrets and shady lives, and who did what and why makes the mystery akin to peeling onions.
Black Coal Thin Ice 白日焰火
Officer Zhang Zili is an up and coming investigator with the police, though the first sign of trouble is his wife leaving him. The investigation around the body parts in the plant yields the name of the victim, the widow confused as to why her husband was targeted. Robbery suspects are located, but thanks to one of them being armed many of the characters of the first act get wiped out, Zhang only barely escaping death by killing them.

Years later, Zhang Zili lives in an alcohol-fueled state of minimal functionality. His reintroduction is him having his motorcycle stolen while he’s too drunk to give chase. He’s burned every bridge at work, where he is a walking joke kept on because of fading goodwill over surviving the shooting incident that capstoned the murder investigation.

But then more body parts are found in coal processing plants. Dun dun DUNNN!!!
Black Coal Thin Ice 白日焰火

Cruel Gun Story 拳銃残酷物語
InBad, Movie Reviews

Cruel Gun Story (Review)

July 27, 2015By

Cruel Gun Story

aka 拳銃残酷物語 aka Kenju Zankoku Monogatari
Cruel Gun Story 拳銃残酷物語
1964
Written by Haruhiko Oyabu
Screenplay by Hisataka Kai
Directed by Takumi Furukawa
Cruel Gun Story 拳銃残酷物語
Cruel Gun Story is a standout entry from the Nikkatsu Noir boxed set, possibly my favorite (with A Colt Is My Passport a close second) of the set, and maybe even one of the better Japanese noir flicks out there. A criminal is hired to lead a heist, but before you can say “setup”, there is an onion farm’s worth of layers of betrayals that spiral out of control into the inevitable conclusion. Part of the drama is not if certain characters will betray everyone, but just when and how they will do so. The mix of everyone looking out for themselves while things keep hitting the worst of all possible universes for outcomes suggests the cruel object isn’t the gun, but life itself for those who choose to live by it and anyone caught in the crossfire.

Joji Togawa is fresh out of the joint, but before he even has a chance to breathe, he’s being scoped out by a yakuza boss to run and armored car heist. Togawa is what he is, and ends up agreeing, though he’s big on saying how this is his one last job. So we know things aren’t going to end well. Togawa meets his team with his old friend, Shirai (Yuji Odaka), it includes Okada (Shobun Inoue) – a former boxer, and Teramoto, a big mouth junkie (and whose girl, Keiko (Minako Kazuki), tags along). Another member is rejected immediately when it’s revealed he easily spills his guts when threatened.
Cruel Gun Story 拳銃残酷物語
The target is an armored car full of 127 million yen in racetrack money, and guarded by motorcycle cops. The plan to snag the car goes off with only a few minor hitches, but that’s when things hit the fan and fall apart at the same time. The team is betrayed from without and within, leading to the survivors behind holed up while a swarm of yakuza blast their guns at them. The scope of the crime is enough that the entire country is looking for them, and there is nowhere for Togawa to hide. Even attempts to fight against the yakuza hunting them ends worse than things were before. Yakuza Boss Matsumoto’s (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi) son is kidnapped, but the other yakuza care more about the money than the boss’s son’s life.

The only way out is to flee the country, Togawa calling in a favor of Takizawa (Tamio Kawaji), who loved Togawa’s sister before she was crippled in an accident (and still loves her). Togawa’s sister sits in a home for the disabled, and despite her pleas for her brother to be good, she knows he’s gone and done something bad again.
Cruel Gun Story 拳銃残酷物語

A Colt is My Passport 拳銃は俺のパスポート
InBad, Movie Reviews

A Colt Is My Passport (Review)

July 20, 2015By

A Colt Is My Passport

aka 拳銃は俺のパスポート aka Koruto wa Ore no Pasupoto
A Colt is My Passport 拳銃は俺のパスポート
1967
Based on the novel by Shinji Fujiwara
Screenplay by Hideichi Nagahara and Nobuo Yamada
Directed by Takashi Nomura
A Colt is My Passport 拳銃は俺のパスポート
Shuji Kamimura (Joe Shishido) and his protege/sidekick Shun Shiozaki (Jerry Fujio) are contract killers who are brought in to eliminate a yakuza boss by a rival family. Things go downhill after they complete the mission, getting captured, escaping, and becoming holed up in a hotel while their employer is incentivized to betray them. While in hiding, hotel worker Mina (Chitose Kobayashi) falls for Shuji and dreams of escaping her trapped existence with him, but can they make it out as the jaws of their pursuers closes in?

Director Takashi Nomura is relatively unknown in the west, A Colt is My Passport seems to be his only film that has had a subtitled release. Sort of a shame, because Colt shows a lot of creative flare that manages to use visuals to show important bits of the story without spoonfeeding it to us. Nomura seems to be a fan of Westerns, incorporating elements such as a whistling/harmonica-filled soundtrack (which also has the normal hip jazz sounds of other Nikkatsu noir flicks) and a final showdown in a dusty landfill that is the spitting image of a desolate Western desert landscape.
A Colt is My Passport 拳銃は俺のパスポート
There is a neat sequence detailing yakuza boss Shimazu’s (Kanjuro Arashi) daily routine and how everything is on a schedule and everything is bulletproof, shown to Shuji and Shun by the man who hired them to kill Shimazu. Later we go through the daily routine again, with camera pans showing no one is tailing Shimazu that day. We see Shuji has already picked when and where he will strike and it setting it up.

Kamimura and Shiozaki end up hiding out at a hotel picked for them by the boss who hired them, Tsugawa (Asao Uchida). It becomes clear from the dialogue that this is not the first time the hotel has been used to hide people, and some of those people have met gruesome fates. Hotel employee Mina was in love with one such man, who was shot by a killer named Senzaki, someone she also used to date and is one of the many goons looking for Kamimura and Shiozaki. Mina’s ability to pick bad boyfriends strikes again with her love for Shuji Kamimura, she seems more in love with the idea of escaping with someone that she sees as noble than actually being in love. And Shuji does play fair, even as he’s being betrayed. He drugs Shun so when they are attacked he won’t suffer. But Kamimura is just too good to be easily taken out, and Mina has an escape plan by ship thanks to crew members that frequent the hotel restaurant.
A Colt is My Passport 拳銃は俺のパスポート

Kept Woman Lifetime
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Kept Woman (Review)

July 5, 2015By

Kept Woman

Kept Woman Lifetime
2015
Written by Doug Barber and James Taylor Phillips
Directed by Michel Poulette
Kept Woman Lifetime
Kept Woman is loony Lifetime insanity with a scary dose of all-too-close to being ripped from the headlines. While Kept Woman isn’t based on a true story, it’s inspired by real events, but then gets a looking glass twist that incorporates the scary world of Men’s Rights Activists. Some spoilers below.
Kept Woman Lifetime
Newlyweds Jessica and Evan Crowder (Courtney Ford and Andrew W. Walker) have a bad experience in the city, including getting robbed, and then coming home to find an armed robber in their apartment. This is enough to scare Jessica into demanding a house in the suburbs. But thanks to them being young and poor, the only thing they can afford is way way way out there, meaning Evan has a hellacious commute and barely gets to see his wife, who now works at home doing graphic design. They maxed out their savings on the place, leading to fights over money and the lack of quality family time. Worse of all, Jessica’s fear of the city and wanting to live somewhere safer put her right next door to someone far more dangerous than some random guy with a gun who wants drug money.
Kept Woman Lifetime
Shaun Benson breathes life into the creepy Simon, fleshing him out as a master manipulator who belief in his own superiority and place as a patriarchal god becomes his undoing. To the outside, Simon comes off as a reclusive hipster dork who has flashes of creepiness while trying to be nice. Those bits of creepy words turn out to be oozing from the cracks of his facade, and the creep monster underneath is a frightening beast capable of dishing out mental and physical torture while holding a carrot for those that willingly fall in line with his brainwashing.

Kept Woman Lifetime

I think that “POLICE” label needs to be bigger. BIGGER!

Take Aim At The Police Van その護送車を狙
InBad, Movie Reviews

Take Aim at the Police Van (Review)

May 25, 2015By

Take Aim at the Police Van

aka その護送車を狙 aka Sono gososha o nerae: ‘Jusango taihisen’ yori
Take Aim At The Police Van その護送車を狙
1960
Screenplay by Shinichi Sekizawa
Based on a story by Kazou Shimada
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Take Aim At The Police Van その護送車を狙
The Nikkatsu borderless action train continues, this time with a police guard looking to uncover the conspiracy to kill prisoners that he took the fall for. Take Aim at the Police Van gets attention as an early piece from Seijun Suzuki, before he got bored enough to try the widespread experimentalization of his flicks.

Michitaro Mizushima (Underworld Beauty) stars as Daijiro Tamon, the guard on a police prisoner transport van that is hit with gun fire and two prisoners are killed. Because someone must take the blame, Tamon is suspended for six months, which gives him plenty of time off to find out who shot at the van and why. Thus begins an investigation that will see Tamon sucked into the world of sex trafficking, hidden behind fronts of modeling agencies. This gives an excuse to have lots of attractive women running around, which gets even more glaring as most of the male characters range from seedy to extra seedy to so full of seeds they’re being sold at garden supply stores.
Take Aim At The Police Van その護送車を狙
Tamon distinguishes himself as a guard because he treats the prisoners fairly, this gives him enough of a reputation that he gets more doors opened to him when he starts hunting for clues. It also seems to say something about the Japanese prison system if just treating someone like a human being is commendable behavior. Not that we have problems like that in modern day America…

The prisoners that were killed don’t seem to be connected at all, but the more Tamon digs, the more he finds connections to something bigger. A missing sister to one of the prisoners who was working as a dancer is connected to another dancer that was watching the police van just before it was fired upon. The dancer, Tsunako Ando (Mari Shiraki), is dating another prisoner from the van, Goro Kashima (Shoichi Ozawa), who has a mysterious new job that he promises will earn a lot of money. And everyone seems connected to the Hamaju Talent Agency run by Yuko Hamashima (Misako Watanabe), who took over when her father Jube (Shinsuke Ashida) fell ill. But a rival firm has popped up and they are poaching each others’ talent.
Take Aim At The Police Van その護送車を狙

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