Reviews

And even the street scenes, which are a reliable source of enjoyment in Wishman's work for their documentary qualities, play with a certain poignancy as the heroine provides downbeat narration about her predicament.

(I understand gross supernatural horror was a popular genre in Hong Kong cinema, but I think this one pretty blatantly takes cues from the Spielberg movie.) I do think the action-adventure mold presents a bit of a problem, in that the movie isn't terribly interested in making sense of the curse, met...

But I do think essentially guileless characters like this can be tricky to make dramatically engaging, and I think the movie pulls it off.

This is a movie for intellectuals, see.) A lot of '80s action movies have a strain a homoeroticism with their hardbody heroes but also a strain of homophobia in their use of stereotypes and slurs, but this one seems almost deliberately confrontational in this respect.

I wouldn't call this a particularly homoerotic movie (the one gay sex scene, a whipping session between the main character and his client, is presented in frantic and shadowy contrast to the more sensual straight scenes), but the character is one defined by his charisma and sexual potency.

Like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, I had to watch this in an English dub, and like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, all the voices except those of the heroes were in a constant state of shrieking or cackling.

(It is interesting how both movies foreground immigrant characters and sexual harassment, although neither is explored for more than a few minutes.) This does distinguish itself from the other movie by featuring colour, which is further enhanced by the woefully degraded transfer I watched, wherein t...

I just watched a few Doris Wishman movies recently, and for all their blatant padding, they usually have a sense of movement, at least in the camerawork, that gives the movies a certain momentum.

(There's perhaps more to unpack with respect to the gender dynamics at play with this element, but I don't think the movie is ignorant of them.) The filmmakers managed to shoot this in the real Alcatraz, and the movie gets a lot of its effect from the deadening physical realities of living in this p...

Oshima has always stood out to me in her girls with guns movies because of her off kilter, androgynous presence (which was even more noticeable when paired with the more overtly girlish Moon Lee), and this movie pushes that even further by casting her as a man, replete with weird male dubbing.