B-movies

Turbo Kid

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One star

There’s nothing surprising in Turbo Kid, you’ll know going in whether it’s your bag or not.  It’s ambitions are meager and it executes them with aplomb.  A penchant for gore & commercial 80’s youth nostalgia above all will get you into this robot girlfriend movie.  It is tired and thoughtless and niche but it has heart.  It’s somehow both sweet and mean.  It’s unfunny and boring.  Shares DNA with the inferior Hobo with a Shotgun and the superior (slightly) Beyond the Black Rainbow.  I watched it with people who loved it and you might too, I dunno man.  Pffffttt.

D & W by: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, & Yoann-Karl Whissell, M & P by: Jean-Phillipe Bernier, More M: Jean-Nicolas Leupi Le Matos, E by: Luke Haigh, FX by: Eric Thivierge, Olivier Xavier, Jean-Mathieu ‘Jib’ Bérubé, etc… S by: Marcello Bezina, Alex Stines, Jean-Francois Robitaile, etc..w/Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Aaron Jeffery, Anouk Whissell, Edwin Wright, Romano Ozari, Orphée Ladouceur etc..93 min, Canada, 2015

The 5 Deadly Venoms

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Three stars

Tempura-paint blood and stipple sponge beards!  The plot concerns 5 & a half protégés of a Kung-fu master and their respective goals of protecting or conning an old man.  They search for buried treasure and shove sharp implements up nostrils.  They run up walls.  There’s some mystery about who the 3rd venom (Scorpion) is.  I liked the masks, they kinda reminded me of the indigenous art of the Eyak and Aleut peoples of Alaska/Kamchatka.  I had to look up those names though.

D & W by: Chang Cheh, More W: Kuang Ni, P by: Mu-To Kung & Hui-Chi Tsao, E by: Hsing-Lung Chiang, M by: Yung-Yu Chen, S by: Ting Liang, Feng Lu, & Chi-Hsien Tai, w/Sheng Chiang, Lung Tu, Lung Wei Wang, Feng Lu, Chien Sun, Pai Wei, Meng Lo, Phillip Kwok Chung-Fung, etc…, 97 min, Hong Kong, 1978

Escape From New York

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Three stars

New York’s skyscrapers like silent sentinels, it’s dark and cold in the valleys of abandoned progress.  You walk amongst this history and your footsteps echo off canyons of cement and you truly feel what it’s like to be Godforsaken.  I know this isn’t really the place to say it, but I’m deeply terrified of a Trump presidency.

D, W, & M by: John Carpenter, More W: Nick Castle, More M: Alan Howarth, P by: Dean Cundey, E by: Todd Ramsay, FX: Roy Arbogast, James Cameron, Brian Chin, Jenna Holman, etc…, S by: Buff Brady, Tony Brubaker, Glory Fioramanti, etc…, w/Kurt Russell, Isaac Hayes, Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef, Tom Atkins, Frank Doubleday, etc…, 99 min, USA, 1981