Summer Fest 7 Recap (Day One): Terminator Genisys, Kung Fury, and Revenge of the Ninja

 After seven long years, it was time to have another Summer Fest Field Trip Movie, and while they can't all be The Happening, you have to give an "A" for effort to this year's outing. I have a pain in my brain, and its name is Genisys. I could maybe live with the fact that this mediocre (at best) fifth Terminator film undoes all of the other movies in order to create a dumber multi-verse if it made any sense. Or even just adhered to its own internal logic, such as it is. But no. It doesn't do that. I could tell early that Genisys was already losing the brave souls who joined me when Skynet had a voice announcing that the time machine was activated and to send the T-800 back to 1984. Let's stop right there. Since when does an automated system like Skynet need to tell itself what it's going to do? Oh, it's for the audience members too stupid to keep up with what is obviously going on? Because this is the first Terminator movie they've ever seen? Okay, fine. Believe me, if that bothers you - and it did for at least two people sitting with me - that's nothing compared with what's coming.

 Guess what? I'm guessing you're not going to see Genisys until it's on the Syfy Channel one Saturday afternoon and you're waiting for Sharknado 5 or something like that. I mean, it's pretty obvious nobody is going to see it on the big screen; there were maybe 11 people at a 7:35 showing on a Friday night, and the multiplex had already dumped Terminator Genisys into one of its "crappy" auditoriums. How do I know? Well, you don't usually go to a theater to see widescreen bars at the top and bottom of the screen. But there they were, because Crossroads 20 couldn't be bothered to put it on anything better than a screen matted for 1.85:1. That's how much they cared about Terminator Genisys.

 I could give you a laundry list of things that would make you simultaneously want to watch Genisys and also to run away in horror, but maybe you'll split the difference and pay two dollars for it in a couple weeks. Or watch it for whatever you spend on cable television next year. Honestly, I'd go for the two dollars, because you can be baffled along with the other four or five people who pay to see it. We can start with recreating scenes from The Terminator (specifically the Griffith Park Observatory and Kyle Reese arrivals), but making them way dumber by throwing in an extra Terminator (old Arnold digitally young-ified) who fights an all digital 1984 version (Bodybuilder Brett Azar replaced completely with pixels), or having a T-1000 chase digital actor Jai Courtney (I think he's playing Kyle Reese, but nobody bothered finishing the "acting" job in the computer) until Sarah Connor (also digital actor Emilia Clarke, similarly unfinished) bursts through the department store and shoots guns. So many guns.

 Anyway, The Terminator never happened. T2 never happened. Terminator 3 never happened, and mercifully, Terminator: Salvation probably won't happen. I'm not even clear how Genisys happens, because after old Arnold Terminator who came back in time to 1974 to protect younger Sarah Connor uses a homemade time machine to send Kyle and Sarah to 2017, there's no way they can still have John Connor and he'd be the right age to send Kyle back.... agh. My brain hurts. Hey, remember "Bad Boys," also known as the theme song from COPS? That's in this movie, for a "being arrested montage" which includes the second of three "Arnold tries to smile" jokes from the deleted scenes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Also Matt Smith (Lost River) has replaced Helena Bonham Carter as the embodiment of Skynet and he turns John Connor (Jason Clarke) into a machine/man/something and then sends it back to 2014 to ensure Skynet will be created with the help of Miles and Danny Dyson, except now it's called Genisys and is an operating system that controls all of our devices. Kyle tells his younger self this because the timeline has been changed and now he has memories of both lives because Nexus point blah blah blah Quantum Magnetics.

 Quantum Magnetics.

 Terminator Genisys is such a stupid movie that I insist you all see it. There are multiple plot holes (like who sent back Pops, er, Guardian... er, forget it, Old Arnold?) that are designed to be addressed by sequels that probably won't be made because that's what happens when you come in 9th on your opening weekend. America has spoken, and it wants Minions. And, uh, they're probably right, but Terminator Genisys was the movie that Summer Fest 7 deserved. I gave it to 'em, and I don't regret it one bit. And look at it this way: if you're Phil Collins, from now on when someone talks about how much they hate Genisys, you can at least be uncertain for a few more seconds...

 Since I'm such a nice guy, when we got back to the Blogorium, I put on Kung Fury. In case you somehow avoided the internet a few weekends ago, it was all the rage on social media and everybody was reposting the link on Twitter and Facebook and, what the hell, let's pretend someone still uses MySpace. Fortunately for me, the masochists who followed me back from Terminator Genisys had somehow missed all of that, and had no idea what Kung Fury was. In truth, explaining what the short film is actually makes it sound worse than the finished product, but I'll do my best.

 Try as I might, there have been very few movies in the "neo-Grindhouse" movement that the Cap'n has actually enjoyed. Planet Terror had a fun John Carpenter vibe, but Hobo with a Shotgun was to relentlessly dour to really enjoy its grimy, 80's inspired aesthetics. Wolfcop pretty much went nowhere, and I've tried to avoid the glut of other, VHS-era inspired independent films because they promise a lot and rarely deliver. All of this is a means of explaining that Kung Fury is one of the rare "inspired by the 80's" concept films that actually does what it sets out to do. It's compact, wildly entertaining, and continually finds ways to surprise you and up the ante. Fest-er's laughed out loud repeatedly by its audacity, even though they'd groaned audibly when I told them about Triceracop before watching it.

 And that's the catch, because yes, there's a Triceratops wearing a police uniform, and of course he has a British accent. He's Kung Fuy (David Sandberg)'s partner, although Kung Fury doesn't want a partner. He works alone, after his original partner was brutally murdered by a kung fu master and then he was struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra at the same time. That's how he became Kung Fury, a cop in Miami, circa 1985. And by that, I mean a few actual sets mixed with liberal usage of green screens, playing in what looks like a grimy ambience of an oft-used VHS tape. Tracking errors are used to mask budget limitations early in the short, when Kung Fury is fighting an out of control arcade box, but everything is so over the top that it's really hard to find fault in the way that Sandberg (who also wrote and directed) presents it.

 Leave it to the Swedes to give us a short film where the hero hacks his way back in time to fight Hitler (The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone) - pardon me, Kung Fuhrer - but goes too far and ends up in "Viking Times," which means Laser Raptors, Direwolves, and Gatling Guns. I'm not even going to tell you what happens after that, because telling you too much about Kung Fury ruins the fun of discovering just how far down the rabbit hole Sandberg is willing to go. I will take a moment to note my appreciation for Triceracops preferred method of killing Nazis - it only makes sense, in that it doesn't make any more sense than anything else that happens. And, of course, the song that plays over the end credits is performed by David Hasselhoff. It's kind of great, and quite appropriate for Kung Fury. One of our Fest-ers described it as "the best thing to come out of Kickstarter," which is true. As I understand it, the short is Sandberg's "proof of concept" to secure funding for a feature length film, and if he can sustain this level of manic energy for 90 minutes, count me in.

Now, it's a high mountain to climb to top the level of 80's cheese-tastic-ness that was Kung Fury, but I had no doubts that Golan-Globus could deliver the goods with Revenge of the Ninja. Remember, after all, that the 1983 not-exactly-a-sequel to Enter the Ninja is, in many ways, a template for the kind of "that can't happen" action movie Kung Fury is drawing from. We're talking about a film that begins with a ninja attack in progress, one that wipes out Cho (Shô Kosugi)'s entire family - save for his infant son - while he's hanging out with art dealer Braden (Arthur Roberts). They return to his home to find his entire family dead, and Cho - who I swear everyone pronounces his name as "Joe" - takes out the evil ninja clan single-handedly. Okay, I guess Braden shoots one of them. And then, without missing a beat, Braden offers Cho a job in America working at his art galleries.

 (SPOILERS ABOUND) Braden is, of course, evil, and is using Cho to traffic heroin in the dolls he delivers to the galleries. While Revenge of the Ninja never directly addresses this, I think we can all safely assume that Braden arranged for Cho's family to be killed. Again - if at any point any character says this out loud, I missed it. Instead, I just kind of guessed it when someone asked why Cho was a character in this movie at all. That's because, despite the fact that we spend inordinate amounts of time with Shô Kosugi, his son Kane Kosugi, and "Grandmother" (Grace Oshita), they're actually completely superfluous to the plot of the movie. Revenge of the Ninja is, for the most part, about Braden's drug dealing and dispute with the Mafia. Braden is actually also a ninja (with a ridiculous silver mask), and he decides to take out the mob without Cho having anything to do with the story. I mean, at all. For all intents and purposes, the title could refer to Braden taking "revenge" on the Mob for screwing him out of a drug deal.

  Cho eventually finds out about the drugs, which leads to Braden hypnotizing Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) into kidnapping Kane, and thugs try to kill Cho (and fail). Since "only a ninja can kill a ninja" or something ridiculous like that, Cho also has to dress up as a ninja and infiltrate the mob compound after Braden has so they can have the most drawn out fight possible.  Also, I guess he's going to save Kane, but since Kane saves himself (and Cathy, who is inexplicably placed in the worst "death trap" possible - it involves a Jacuzzi) and Cho never even looks for him, let's stick with the fight scene. I mean, you don't hit 80 minutes with the story they've got.

 I mentioned that Revenge of the Ninja isn't really a sequel of Enter the Ninja, and by that I mean it isn't in any way a sequel to Enter the Ninja. It's also not a prequel to Ninja III: The Domination - a previous Fest favorite - but since all three feature Shô Kosugi in some capacity, they form the loosest definition of a "trilogy" you're likely to see. This is the only one to outright star Kosugi (and his son), but Cho is so incidental to the actual story that you'd be forgiven for thinking he's just another supporting character. That said, Revenge of the Ninja has all of your favorite elements of 80s action cinema, including ethnic stereotypes: not even just the odd interpretation of "ninja," but also the Mafia goons and their one hired assassin who is dressed like a Native American and of course uses a Tomahawk. Revenge of the Ninja also features what may be the most uncomfortable fight scene in the history of Summer Fest, when Cathy is sent to kidnap Kane, and we're forced to watch a grown woman fight a six year old boy. It's much more of a back and forth battle than you'd think, but I'm not really sure that benefits anyone.

 After that, we realized we were old and tired and boring, so everybody went home without watching Traxx or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Fortunately, there's always tomorrow...

Blogorium Review: Nightcrawler

 Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is not a human being. He looks like one, or an approximation of one, anyway, but he isn't. The term "sociopath" doesn't do someone like Louis Bloom justice; not only does he not care about anyone or anything not directly connected to his agenda, they barely register as human beings at all to him. At best, they're objects he can manipulate, blackmail, or (in some instances), literally drag around to serve his purposes. We meet Louis Bloom as he assaults (possibly kills) someone who may or may not be a police officer / security guard and steals his watch - a visual metaphor that pops up periodically throughout Nightcrawler, as a reminder of sorts. Louis steals some construction equipment and some raw materials, and sells it to a scrapyard owner (Marco Rodriguez). While he's there, Louis makes his case that he should also be given a job, and doesn't quite register that the owner looks upon him with disdain. Only when he's told "I don't hire thieves," does Louis get the message and leaves.

 This is the protagonist of Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler, the sort of film that makes one long for the days of decent antiheroes like Travis Bickle. It's certainly an interesting film, one that has a few rookie mistakes and a score that nearly cripples the film, but on the whole there's more to recommend than not. That is, as long as you don't mind spending two hours watching a "rags to riches" story where the scrappy young hero is replaced with a total psycho. It's a riveting performance from Gyllenhaal, and the rest of the cast is quite good as well, but I can't honestly say that I'm in any hurry to watch Nightcrawler again. There's a level of cynicism about humanity in Nightcrawler that makes the end of David Fincher's Gone Girl look like Pollyanna by comparison. And how Gilroy gets Louis from a low level scumbag to a truly frightening success story is by no means pleasant.

 By chance, Louis comes across an accident on the highway, and is subsequently introduced to the world of "nightcrawlers": independent videographers who shoot footage of crime scenes, accidents, or likewise grisly occurrences, and sell them to the highest bidder. Right after Louis pulls over, the van for Mayhem Productions pulls up, and the ever inquisitive Bloom grills Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) about what he does. An entrepreneur without a direction, Louis decides he has an objective, and will stop at nothing to be like Loder. Better than Loder. His people skills aren't great: Louis doesn't so much speak to people as he regurgitates business seminar talking points, applying them to himself as necessary. We don't know much about his life: he has an apartment with a TV and a plant, and beyond that, he's a cipher. It's not who Louis is, but what he's capable of doing that Gilroy is interested in showing us.

 In many ways, Nightcrawler follows the narrative structure of a "rags to riches" story almost exactly, only to horrifying ends. Louis buys a camera and a police scanner, makes mistakes, but eventually finds some usable footage and sells it to the lowest rated news channel in Los Angeles. He initiative impresses the news producer, Nina Romina (Renee Russo), although she has no idea what his real agenda is. He hires an intern, Rick (Riz Ahmed), a mostly homeless kid in desperate need of work, and relentlessly insults his inability to do exactly what Louis wants when he wants it. But they make it work: accident after accident, crime scene after crime scene, Louis builds his reputation. He's not above sneaking into somebody's house or moving evidence around for better shot composition. When he arrives at an accident before the police get there, Louis even moves a body in order to get more compelling footage. Ethics don't even factor into Bloom's world, much to the chagrin of KWLA's Frank Kruse (Kevin Rahm), the station director.

 At this point, we should probably be a little worried about where Nightcrawler is headed, although I will admit that I wasn't sure just how far down the rabbit hole we would be following Louis. He refuses an offer to join Mayhem Video and then goes one step further to insure his competition won't be around much longer. He arrives at a triple homicide before the killers have even left, and then spends time wandering around the house filming the bloody aftermath, and then withholds crucial evidence when detectives Frontieri (Michael Hyatt) and Liberman (Price Carson) track the news report to its source - Bloom's newly coined "Video Production Services," a "legitimate news source" as he demands Nina describe it to her anchors. His manipulation of Nina is arguably even worse, as he both emotionally and professionally blackmails her (the former off-camera but the latter very much in evidence onscreen). He takes umbrage to Rick negotiating a salary before a tense high speed chase, which leads us to the ultimate revelation of just how far Louis is willing to go to be the best nightcrawler in Los Angeles.

Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy, The Fall), who wrote and makes his directorial debut with Nightcrawler, does a fine job of showcasing the actors in this seedy, underexplored portrait of LA. It's largely Gyllenhaal's show, but Russo and Ahmed in particular are very good as the dual sides to how an actual human being would react to someone like Louis Bloom. Other characters come and go without much impact - even Bill Paxton barely registers as "the competition," and while the film is technically sound, it often feels inert. Gilroy seems to come to life during the high speed chase towards the end of the film, but Nightcrawler is often too low key, relying on Gyllenhaal to carry the narrative forward, by hook or by crook. The level of cynicism on display calls for something perhaps a little showier, if I'm being honest. Not too much, but there are portions of the middle that drag and lack momentum. I wouldn't consider it unfair to compare Nightcrawler to another writer-turned-director debut, Robert D. Siegel (The Wrestler)'s Big Fan, which covers a similarly troubled protagonist, and is likewise an interesting watch but not a film I'd hurry to revisit.

 More problematic is the score by James Newton Howard (The Happening), which is often jarringly inappropriate. If the direction is low key to a fault, the score is too traditional: there's often no subtlety to the music, to the point I found it distracting at critical parts of the film. If it was meant to be a deliberate juxtaposition between the character beats and the traditional story structure, it doesn't succeed at all. And, barring that, if this is simply what Howard thought fit best with the footage in front of him, he failed completely. If ever a film called for minimalist scoring, it would be Nightcrawler (I have seen reviews that suggested something closer to Cliff Martinez's score to Drive would be more appropriate, and it's a fair point). If anything, the music hurts the film more than Gilroy stretching his wings as a director.

 And yet, I would recommend Nightcrawler on the strength of its performances, provided you don't mind seeing a movie where the evil are rewarded and the good mostly punished, or otherwise relegated to obscurity. The point of view in the film is strictly from Bloom's perspective, so don't be surprised if your impressions of him match the befuddled reactions during points when he does encounter a genuine human being. Louis isn't one, and he's perhaps the least likable antihero in a long line of them, but if you don't mind taking a ride into the depths of darkness, Nightcrawler is a compelling trip downward. Just make sure you have something light to follow it with after you're done. Maybe a Lars Von Trier / Michael Haneke double feature...

Summer Fest 5 (Day Two): Ninja III - The Domination

 Holy catballs what the hell was that? Ninja III: The Domination is the kind of movie I could spend the rest of the weekend trying to explain to you and still not do it justice. There are so many inexplicable moments of sheer insanity, of downright "what were you thinking when you made this"-ness that you have to see it to believe it. Miami Connection is a collection of well intentioned failures that entertains through its earnestness, and Ninja III: The Domination still blows it out of the water for pure "WTF" factor. They're also both about ninjas (kind of).

 If we're getting technical about this, Ninja III is the third film in a series that began with Enter the Ninja and continued with Revenge of the Ninja, in that all three films feature Shô Kosugi in different roles, but usually as some kind of ninja character. The star of Ninja III: The Domination is Lucinda Dickey (Breakin', Cheerleader Camp), as Christie, who is somehow both a lineman (linewoman?) and an aerobics instructor in Arizona (hey, that's where Kingdom of the Spiders took place!) who has a chance encounter with a ninja (David Chung) and is possessed by his spirit through his sword.

 Well, let's step back a bit, because I think recapping what happens before Christie's encounter with the evil ninja. After the Cannon Films logo (always a promising sign for movies made between 1980 and 1994), the ninja goes into his cave and opens a secret compartment, revealing his ninja gear, which he'll need to assassinate some guy playing golf. So right off the bat, we have a ninja on a golf course in broad daylight, killing his target and all of the guys bodyguards, and then the police arrive, and he kills most of them (including taking down a helicopter) and escapes two cops on motorcycles by running between them. Even after being filled with more bullets than the guy who "tested" ED-209 in Robocop, he manages to throw a smoke pellet and disappear (SPOILER ALERT: in true misdirection, he just buries himself where he was standing) and then Christie comes over to check out the ruckus.

 I know it's a cheap and easy out to drop the phrase "phallic imagery" when talking about a movie, but it's hard to argue that going from "mounting a pole" to "gripping his sword" is just a cigar, to mix metaphors a bit. There's a lot of "does that mean penis" imagery going on in the film, and I haven't even begun to cover what Ninja III is actually about. Oh no, the golf course is just the set up, because Christie is possessed by the ninja so that he can take revenge on the police who killed him. For reasons the narrative doesn't necessarily need but the audience most certainly does, we know she's being possessed by the ninja when his sword starts glowing and floats around her apartment.

 Oh yeah, did I mention that this movie can roughly (and fairly) be described as "Enter the Ninja meets The Exorcist"? Because it can, but if Exorcist II: The Heretic exemplified everything people think of about trashy 70s culture, Ninja III epitomizes what people who didn't live through the 1980s imagine the decade was like. I have no idea how, even with two jobs, Christie can afford the studio apartment she has, or how she managed to decorate it like every guy in college would imagine his first apartment would look like, but the set designer and art department must have cleared out every dorm room in Arizona to make it so. In addition to free-standing lockers, a payphone, a coffee table that's clearly just a spindle, and steel girders as a bed frame, Christie also owns an arcade box with a game that looks suspiciously like a proto-Diner Dash. It turns out only to be in the movie so that it can hypnotize her with lasers (I cannot make this up) BEFORE the floating sword flies out of her closet.

 During one particularly fantastic scene, the sword decides it's time to possess Christie, but she's having none of it. The apartment goes all Poltergeist and instead of freaking out she turns up her boombox and starts dancing. Take that, ninja! (SPOILER: She doesn't win - the boombox explodes).

 Christie's new found ninja powers raise the attention of police officer Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett), who watches her take out would-be rapists while standing there and doing nothing, and then arrests her as a pretext for asking her out. This begins their awkward courtship, which includes the sexiest use of V-8 you're ever going to see (I'm certain of that). While Billy does wear ball-hugging pants at some point (every movie during Summer Fest apparently must have this), it's his out-of-control back hair that provides most of the "ewwww" factor. Oh, Billy is also one of the police responsible for gunning down the ninja, so conflict!

 I'm leaving out so many amazing moments because you really need to see Ninja III: The Domination for yourself, but just in case I haven't sold you already, James Hong appears as a kind-of Japanese exorcist about halfway through the film, there's a ninja massacre during a policeman's funeral, a battle involving a pool table, a showdown at a Buddhist Temple, and that's all before Shô Kosugi shows up as a rival ninja who wants to stop the spirit of the ninja who took his eye. He wears the hilt of a sword as his eye patch. Again, I cannot make up how insane Ninja III is. The movie's rampant insanity caused one viewer to lose an hour and a half's worth of sewing because she was too focused on the ridiculous shenanigans onscreen. This is not a "maybe" watch - Ninja III: The Domination is a MUST watch, and the highlight of an already stellar Fest.