Film Rolls Season 2, Round 09: Shipwrecked and Dream Lovers

A couple days later, a couple more movies.

Dale rolls an 8, moving down to the next row and silent movie territory with Shipwrecked, another crowdfunded disc featuring a woman on the run from the murder of an abusive man. Honestly, kind of impressed how okay the silent era was with this.

Centipede, meanwhile, rolls a 13 and jumps from the silent era to 1980s Hong Kong and the pairing of Chow Yun-fat and Brigitte Lin in Dream Lovers. Looking at my camera roll, it looks like I came home to do that right after treating myself to some swordfish schnitzel before starting the pre-colonoscopy fast!



So, uh, that was fun. How about the movies?

Shipwrecked '26

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, crowdfunded Blu-ray)

Shipwrecked is an amiable little silent with a very pleasant cast that sort of stumbles a bit when the plot has to matter more than just watching them bounce off each other. That's hardly fatal at its 74-minute length, though even at that scale, one kind of feels like the movie could have done a little bit more.

It starts with ship's cook Larry O'Neil (Joseph Schildkraut) seeming none too excited to set sail again with Captain Klodel (Matthew Betz) and his ragtag crew, but, hey, it's a living. Meanwhile, Lois Austin (Seena Owen) fought back against a prominent man who tried to rape her and attempts to throw herself into the sea, but Larry pulls her out. Larry eventually finds her hiding among his stores after the ship sails, but can't keep her hidden; the captain installs her in the first mate's cabin (and Larry in the brig), expecting sexual favors as he plans to turn her in. A storm leads the crew to abandon ship and Lois to rescue Larry, eventually making landfall on a small island more or less run by a British trader (Lionel Belmore). They carve out a decent life there, but Klodel is returning, blackmail on his mind.

The name of the movie is "Shipwrecked", but the good stuff happens on the ship and before. Well, for certain values of "good", considering that we're talking about Klodel being a gross letch who puts Lois and Larry in very uncomfortable positions after we've had the fun of Larry sneaking around to make sure Lois gets fed without alerting the crew to how their supplies are dwindling a little faster than they should be. They've got nice chemistry, with Larry pushing the boundary of being just a little too eager to be a white knight and Lois being a bit more of a survivor than she initially thought. The storm's a nicely done action scene, too, recalling Buster Keaton's The Navigator even if it's not quite so elaborate.

Ideally, this would either be most of the movie or an exciting first act that sets up the bulk of the film on the island, but that's never quite set up to be truly exciting. There's Laska Winter as island girl Zanda (she seemed to play a lot of "exotic" beauties in her brief career), who is smitten with the handsome newcomer, men with an interest in Lois, and the question of whether Klodel will be able to force the genteel trader to surrender Lois before news reaches them that she's not as wanted for murder as they think, but not much comes of it. Lois and Larry are seemingly not a couple at this point for vague, unsatisfying reasons, but there never seems to be any real threat of them ending up otherwise.

The way they get there, on the other hand, isn't ideal; the last half of the movie hasn't necessarily been leading to much, but Larry jumping from assertive to aggressive doesn't quite seem like the right call, at least from a hundred years later. All the ingredients for a more active finale or there, but the second half just doesn't lead to them.

Mung chung yan (Dream Lovers)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
Where to stream it

I wonder just how much trend-chasing was going on when Dream Lovers was made; the filmmakers don't really hide the attempt to draft on how popular the Terra Cotta Soldier exhibit in Hong Kong was at the time even as they don't seem to have much ability to actually include it. In some ways, the way Hong Kong filmmakers turned so many movies around quickly from all sorts of inspiration is what made it so exciting, in that someone with a shotgun is bound to hit something, but it turns out to be more fun in a goofy action movie than this sort of romantic fantasy, despite the star power brought to bear.

Though conductor Song Yu (Chow Yun-fat) has roots in Hong Kong, he has spent much of his career working internationally, but makes sure to visit the exhibition when his latest stop brings him to the Crown Colony. His girlfriend and manager Wah Lei (Cher Yeung Suet-Yee) notes that he bears a striking resemblance to one of the soldiers, which triggers strange, erotic dreams involving a distant age and a beautiful concubine. Jeweler Cheung Yuet-Heung (Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia) has many of the same dreams, from the other perspective, and when their paths cross, they feel a powerful attraction, the sort where even Lei's blind spiritualist grandmother (Wong Man-Lei) warns her that she should probably not just prepare for their relationship to end, but encourage it; this sort of love across incarnations is undeniable.

Dream Lovers often feels like an attempt to build an entire romantic film out of chemistry, and when it reaches its finale, they've almost pulled it off: The final embrace between Chow Yun-fat and Brigitte Lin in the rain is beautiful and sad, the culmination of a ton of scenes where director Tony Au Ting-Ping dials in on the pair's powerful charisma, and the screenplay by Manfred Wong Man-Chun and Chiu Kang-Chien builds up the attendant mythology without making it a puzzle that must be solved to accomplish some sort of task. Cher Yeung leans into the utter thanklessness of her role; Lei is a good person who has put real effort into this relationship and knows she deserves better than being cast aside just because this Yuet-Heung chick has done little more than exist, and Yeung makes this jealousy both righteous and corrosive.

The trouble is, there's not much of a story grappling with what it means. The idea that having a fated lover suddenly appear and turn you on might actually be less romantic than horrifyingly disruptive is buzzed about, but treated as a problem for Lei rather than the reincarnated lovers, who don't really do anything or fret about how these versions of themselves from thousands of years ago are overriding their present selves. There's flashbacks, both to the Qin Dynasty and to the night they were born, and Chow & Lin have the necessary spark, but the eeriness of the start dissipates quickly and there's not a lot to replace it aside from sheer attraction and lust. What makes Yu and Yuet great together besides having this prehistory? I'm open to the idea that, for a culture with a stronger belief in reincarnation than mine, you don't necessarily need more, that a lot of this is assumed and one can see the pairs' reactions in their personalities from the start and the fantasy itself is much more basic and relatable, but, I don't know, it feels like it still needs more.

As an aside: One of the things I do when my mind wanders during a movie is prime factor numbers that get mentioned, and the oft-repeated '2197 years" is 13*13*13. Does that mean something? Is this some powerful Chinese numerology? Not to dismiss numerology - after all, it's kind of fascinating serendipity that my rolling dice paired these two movies, made on opposite sides of the planet and separated by sixty years, but both featuring an intriguing setup and fine casting allowed to fizzle by a back half that knocks around, kind of coasting to an expected ending.


All told, I liked Shipwrecked a little more than Dream Lovers, and when they're expressed in star ratings, it results in the pair pulling even!

Dale Evans: 39¾ stars
Centipede: 39¾ stars

Tight as can be, with more serendipity to come!

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 08: Jagko and Beggars of Life

Heh, whoops!

No mistakes for Dale, who rolls a 14 and makes it almost to the end of the first row, landing on another from the Korean Film Archive, Jagko. You know what's kind of cool? You can search the Harvard Film Archives's website to see if they've played a movie over the past 25 years or so, and I'm kind of mildly surprised this hasn't. They play a fair amount of Korean cinema and this seems up their alley. I'm also kind of surprised that the program I figured it would have played in was 20 years ago. Time flies!

The "whoops" came a couple days later when Centipede rolled a 4 and landed on Beggars of Life, which really shouldn't have been on the shelf full of movies I haven't seen before because I saw it back in 2017, at the Archive, coincidentally enough. It didn't exactly feel familiar while watching it so much as like the sort of thing I've absorbed through osmosis, so I'm keeping it in. Kind of envying those who can be asked if they've seen a movie and just remember their every thought about it, though.

Solid as heck couple days here:

Jagko (aka Pursuit of Death)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)

Yeah, I'm very glad I bought a bunch of Korean Film Archive discs sight unseen when they were on sale a couple years back. Jagko is a terrific little drama with just enough thriller in it to keep it interesting and probably a whole ton of extra layers for people in 1980 Korea.

It starts by introducing the audience to Song Gi-yeol (Choi Yun-Seok), once a cop but now an alcoholic vagrant, being picked up and sent to a "rehab center" that doesn't offer much in the way of services or chance to leave - if its residents had family they hadn't alienated, they wouldn't be there - only to discover with shock that one of the other residents (Kim Hui-ra) appears to be Baek Gong-san aka "Jagko", the communist guerilla whose capture soon after the war was going to seal Song's reputation as a fast-rising star, but whose embarrassing escape left Song looking incompetent at best and complicit at worst. He's been chasing this white whale for decades, and does not intend to stop just because the guy at the other end of the bunkhouse says he's never even heard of this Jagko guy.

Writer Song Kil-han and director Im Kwon-taek don't leave the audience in suspense very long; it's hard to have parallel flashbacks if Jagko is not around, somewhere, to do the flashing back. Happily, Im and company do good work revealing what is the case to the audience while still making Song's certainty be more the result of his obsession than any evidence that "Kim" is actually the man he is looking for. It sets up a tight game of cat-and-mouse, as both parties try to recruit their fellow inmates to help them thwart the other, the stakes objectively small and petty but also all that both of them have got. Heck, at times they're all that the other people in this dormitory have; none of them really have any investment in Song's obsession or special fondness for Kim beyond the anti-communist background noise the ROK has been putting out their entire lives (that the institution keeping them off the streets is pretty socialist barely even registers as irony), but it's a little exciting and something to do, although most would prefer not to rock the boat. This isn't a case where the feud is going to spill out and metastasize into some larger cancer, but where it might be remembered as a weird thing that happened this one time.

The flashbacks fill it out, establishing why the stakes are so high for the pair of them. Im jumps back and forth and from one to the other, building a sense of tragedy as it's not always clear whether either could have stepped back and lived a normal life: For all that Song is clearly making self-destructive decisions which wind up dooming both himself and his quarry, the suggested magnitude of Jagko's crimes and the stigma associated with communism during these years may have been worse, such that Jagko could never fully open up to any of his lovers and Song maybe never could live down even the suspicion that he let the other man escape on purpose. There's still a litany of lives ended or ruined in their wake, and each episode feels substantial as it asks the question of whether things would turn out different if Song just stopped here without taking the audience away from the present for too long.

Choi Yun-seok and Kim Hui-ra both impress as Song and Jagko, respectively; though the audience never gets to see either at their peak, but we do get a sense of their decay, and how, even in this state, Song's got this vestigial arrogance and Jagko a certain charisma that probably made him a successful revolutionary back in the day, whether never going long without a girlfriend, even living off the grid, or convincing folks that Song might pose a threat to them as well. The film is populated by a number of entertaining minor characters, and the filmmakers have a knack for giving each marginal environment they find themselves in have a distinct feel and be a notable step down.

It wavers a bit toward the end, when the pair must explicitly confront that they are, ultimately, the only constants in each other's lives, and that the world has in many ways moved on from their conflict. I gather Im was a workhorse director cranking out genre films, and even if he was playing with grander ideas here, there's still an odd directness in the last act and curtness at the very end that's not really unlike what came before at all, but isn't quite what it could be. Jagko is sort of a grindhouse film with ambitions, ones it lives up to more along the way versus at the conclusion.

Beggars of Life)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the DVD at Amazon (wait, is my BD really out of print?)

The bulk of Beggars of Life can't measure up to its opening scenes, which can shock a modern audience with just how frank and sophisticated a silent movie can be. When most of what one sees from the era is slapstick comedy or grand epics, the grim tableau an amiable train-hopper finds and the double-exposed flashback where he gets an explanation are a heck of an eye-opener.

That hobo is Jim (Richard Arlen) - "The Boy" - who pokes his head into a farmhouse and sees what initially seems to be an abandoned meal, although on closer examination, the farmer is at the table, dead. His stepdaughter Nancy (Louise Brooks) admits to killing him, but it's pretty clear that he had it coming after years of abuse. Though Jim is reluctant to get mixed up in this, he eventually lets her tag along, disguised as a boy, as he makes his way to Canada, where a relative supposedly has a job waiting for him. Eventually, though, the body will be discovered and a reward posted, word of which makes it to a hobo camp led by The Arkansaw Snake (Robert Perry), possibly leaving Nancy's fate in the hands of the eccentric Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery).

The billing of the stars is interesting, almost a hundred years later - most today will think of this as a Louise Brooks film, and she's pretty great; Brooks establishes Nancy as someone just strong enough to be able to move forward but still kind of reeling from what she's had to do to get to this point; Nancy's a haunted heroine who never quite comes off as a damsel in distress but also clearly can use the support Jim offers. Richard Arlen (second-billed) is pleasant enough as Jim, who is maybe more of a match for Brook's Nancy that a complement, someone who has seen his own sort of hard times but still has a good core, and as the film goes on one gets the impression that what's awaiting him in Canada is not nearly as sure as he claims, but he's trying to will it into being for Nancy's sake. Arlen is one of a large number of matinee idols who run together now, handsome and capable enough to have had notable roles in a number of films for decades, but never quite had the combination that made him an icon remembered the way his co-stars were. Both are billed below Wallace Beery, who makes hobo "Oklahoma Red" memorable but an oddity to a later audience, like we're supposed to enjoy the familiarity of his shtick as much as its content. He'd become an icon of sorts, and he's pretty good here, enough that one can see why he's positioned as the central character despite not showing up until relatively late; he grabs the audience's attention and there's at least a genuine arc and question about whether he will ultimately defend or betray the young pair.

The opening is the best part, though, direct and filled with genuine horror without much in the way of euphemism or equivocation on whether or not Nancy is in the right; director William A. Wellman jumps from Jim's stark discovery to Nancy's somewhat dazed telling without skipping a beat. It's a tough bar to clear, but if the film never has another sequence that good, it at least lets those scenes hang over the rest of the movie: What could have been a bit of ill-advised comedy becomes something more sinister, and every further threat of violence reflects what specific horrors might await Nancy. When the film attempts to impress in other ways - for instance, a runaway train that makes for a nifty climax without making this the sort of thrill picture one associates with Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton - it's generally done very well.

I'm tempted to give this another watch relatively soon, rather than wait another decade for it to reclassify itself in my head as primarily one of Louise Brooks's iconic roles, just to see how it hits when expecting all three stars to have the same sort of weight.


Well, that's a push.

Dale Evans: 37¼ stars
Centipede: 37½ stars

Centipede still ahead by the same nose as before.

Lunar New Year 2026: Blades of the Guardians

Just for fun, let's look at the first day of Lunar New Year at the box office in China!

Whoa, the movie that's getting the biggest push for the first few days, Blades, made a respectable $19M, but the movie that's getting the second-biggest (and looks like it's sticking around more during the weekend), Scare Out made #34.4M! And the number one film in China for this day was Pegasus 3, pulling in a staggering $92.5M and as near as I can tell is not opening in Boston (I've seen dates of the 23rd and 27th, so maybe AMC's waiting to figure out where to put it). Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe is supposed to open mid-March, and I'm as shocked as anybody that China demanded a second Panda Plan.

Of course, the other thing is that the Lunar New Year movies in China fluctuate like crazy over the first month or so, like the country of over a billion collectively decides to see one movie first, then catches another a few days later, and then a third the next week, so the top three wind up making the same amount. That doesn't happen in the USA very often - something has a bad first couple days and it's not even getting evening shows on Thursday - and I must admit, I do kind of envy that China has the sort of situation where things can build word-of-mouth that way.

But, enough about box office - the important thing is that we seem to be off to a fun start of the festivities!


Biao ren (Blades of the Guardians)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2026 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available), or buy the manhua at Amazon

Fair warning: The title that displays during the opening credits for this movie includes a colon, meaning that 81-year-old director Yuen Woo-Ping, directing his first full feature in about eight years, apparently intends at least one more episode and you're not necessarily going to get a full conclusion with this one. You get enough, though, as Yeun presents a big-budget wuxia adventure with swordfighting and charm to spare.

It starts with bounty hunter Dao Ma (Wu Jing), late of the Left Valiant Palace Guards, and his seven-year-old traveling companion Xiao Qi (Ju Qianlang) tracking down a fugitive but offering to let him go if he pays triple the bounty. He's after bigger prey in Two-Headed Snake (Max Zhang Jin), but also gets offered a job as a general by local lord Chang Guiren (Jet Li Lian-Jie), but prefers the freelance life and his home in Mo Village. Returning there, he's given a mission by elder Mo Lao (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) to deliver China's most wanted fugitive, face-painted revolutionary Zhi Shiliang (Sun Yizhou), to Chang'an. Also along for the ride are Mo's spirited daughter Ayuya (Chen Lijun), just extricated from an arranged betrothal to the heir to another clan, Heyi Xuan (CiSha), and Ayuya's guardian Ani (Xiong Jinyi). They'll be pursued along the way by every mercenary in the land, most notably Dao Ma's old comrade in arms Ting Di (Nicholas Tse Ting-Fung) and his partner (Liang Biying), eventually forming an uneasy alliance with Jade-face Shu (Yu Shi), who has his own prisoner Yan Zinang (Li Yunxiao) to deliver to the capitol.

That's a lot going on, but, some of these folks in the long list of cast members are basically guest stars so that Yuen and his action team can mix and match opponents and have Dao Ma face new challenges regularly rather than and endless series of rematches, and will exit in relatively short order (it's not uncommon for someone to have their name and position put up in subtitles and then be dead less than ten minutes later). The action kicks off in earnest with a three way swordfight between Wu Jing, Max Zhang, and Jet Li, and while they've all maybe lost a step compared to ten years ago, it's a heck of a great battle that establishes the way Yeun and his team are going to stage things: There's a fair amount of wire-fu going on, but they won't be defying gravity nearly as much as the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or The Matrix. There are three or four more standout action set pieces after that, including a fantastic centerpiece in the middle of a sandstorm and a finale big enough to get past when it's holding things back.

What makes it better is that while Yeun Woo-Ping's fight choreography tends to be imaginative and brilliantly-executed, what he, choreographer Dang Shan-Peng, and action director Ku Heun-Chiu do here really manages to give it solid emotional beats: Early on, it's easy to take Dao Ma preferring to extort than kill for just wanting money, but as the film goes on it becomes clear that he would really rather not, to the extent that a particularly striking and vicious kill indicates that he's angry and done messing around; at another point you can see that a typically capable character is swinging her sword too broadly and that this will cause her downfall. In some ways, Ayuya's arc is entirely told through action, from the cheery trick archery of her first appearances to the angry stabbing at the finish. Perhaps the only real flaw is that Dao Ma and Ting Di look too similar on first glance; yes, they're meant to be reflections of each other, but when the camera gets too close or the motion too quick, it can take a half-second too long to recognize which tall bearded guy in matching black armor we're looking at.

Wu Jing is the charismatic one, at least in this film; though he gained attention among action-movie fans for his martial-arts prowess in Hong Kong, he's spent much of the past decade in China becoming a more versatile leading man, with even his action roles being more military or science-fictional. Here, he's able to give Dao Ma a light enough personality that the darker turns the action takes later aren't revealing that as a facade but showing a guy who has been trying to live a good life and hates being forced into this much violence. He plays especially well off young Ju Qianlang, and fits into a fine ensemble: Chen Lijun is an enthusiastic princess with room to grow, CiSha really nails the charming prince who has a sadistic streak underneath, Yu Shi and Li Yunxiao have a chemistry that suggests Shu & Yan could be more than captor and prisoner but doesn't insist upon it. Sun Yizhou kind of feels like a placeholder as Zhi - the character never feels like someone who can be the threat to the emperor through sheer force of personality - and one wonders if the filmmakers are kind of hedging so they can define him better in later installments. On a more positive note, "Big Tony" Leung Ka-Fai and Jet Li deliver different kinds of gravitas in their roles as elders.

The scenes that Wu Jing and Jet Li share early, whether talking or fighting, put a big grin on my face, and not just because Jet Li is a presence too seldom seen on-screen since some health problems and a turn toward philanthropy (this is his first film in six years). Wu is the closest thing there is to being Li's heir, a screen fighter who burst on the scene with sheer punching ability but developed a genial screen presence along the way, and it's nice to see the torch passed on-screen without getting maudlin about it. I'm not sure how many more adventures there are for Dao Ma in the original manhua, but I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more on future Lunar New Years. It's got the soul of a western (right down to the stagecoach) and the action of a wuxia.

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 06: Harry Palmer and Shin Dong-hun

It's gonna be a long one today, because I spent the next month after round 5 getting through a couple of box sets!

Dale rolls a three, making the relatively short hop to Imprint's very slick-looking Harry Palmer box set! I don't necessarily need or even want fancy box sets much these days - horizontal inches of shelf are at a premium! - but this is a pretty nice package, which generally seems to be the case with Imprint, although I haven't gotten very many more of the fancy releases. Tariffs & shipping make it rough, currently.

To start December, Centipede rolled a 17, which jumps then a good way into the first Korean box, which is all material from the Korean Film Archive. I purchased a bunch of those when Kimchi DVD had a sale and I figured, what the heck, these things may never be cheaper (or even available again), and shipping costs less per disc when you order a bunch, and I've got the tendency of thinking of Korean cinema a starting roughly when Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance arrived stateside, so why not give myself the chance to learn more. The first one landed on was a pair of animated films from 1967 by Shin Dong-hun.

So, that's five movies (and a bunch of special features) that kept me busy for the better part of a month. How'd it go?

The Ipcress File

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the American disc at Amazon

The Imprint disc includes the trailer, and it's kind of telling that, even more than highlighting how this is based on a very popular novel and some of the people who worked on the James Bond movies, it promotes Michael Caine as an exciting young face to watch. Obviously, they got that call right: I don't know that the pointedly non-Bond-like spy story is actually that great, but everything that would make Caine a star in the 1960s and 1970s is here from the start, just the right ingredient to make a movie that flirts with dryness kind of exciting.

Caine plays Harry Palmer (nameless in the original Len Deighton novels), a former soldier that got a little bit too entrepreneurial with the supplies and was given the choice of working for MI-5 or prison. He's bored out of his mind doing surveillance for Colonel H.L. Ross (Guy Doleman), who seconds the insubordinate agent to Major Dalby (Nigel Green), a stuffy middle-manager investigating the abduction of British scientists who, when ransomed, are seemingly unable to continue their work.

Palmer was given a name for the movies, presumably because dialog that avoids mentioning it would have called attention to the filmmakers trying to avoid naming him more than it would have allowed him to be an anonymous functionary in the way that a novel told in the first person would (the special features tell what feel like oft-repeated stories about Caine and the producers trying to come up with the most unobtrusive name possible). Which is not to say Palmer is a cipher - he is a man of intelligence and taste, but with a scrappy, working-class edge to him, a guy you can easily imagine doing the crimes alluded to but also honest enough in his way, observant and willing to take the straightest line between points A and B even when it's not the done thing. He is in this way the template for every character Caine would play over at least the next twenty years, at least until he became a familiar and reassuring presence, and he's got it down to a science from the start. He's well-paired with everybody else in the film - Guy Doleman as the boss who knows you've got to embrace all of Palmer to get his best work, Nigel Green as the aristocratic officer who is increasingly irrelevant in post-war Britain, Sue Lloyd as the office girl who knows exactly what Palmer is up to, Gordon Jackson as a veteran who has just the class and experience to be amusedly aloof, etc. - and it never becomes a story about Palmer, or the sort of 1960s Brit he embodies, but who he is feels essential to the story and Michael Caine feels essential to that.

It's wrapped around a story about brainwashing, which is central to a few high-profile Cold War thrillers (The Manchurian Candidate being the most obvious), and looking at it from 60 years later, it's kind of odd that it was not a big part of more. It was, after all, presented as an existential ideological conflict, and the fear that one could have one's brain broken to embrace communism despite it being obviously inferior (and, indeed, necessitating some sort of traumatic attack) was embedded deep enough to still persist today, despite somewhat different targets. There's maybe a metaphor to that sort of collectivism smothering individual genius or making one a mindless pawn, even with the idea that Palmer's rebellious streak is what might serve as a bulwark against it.

Or not; the film is rather too matter-of-fact to lean into that sort of thing. It makes for an entertaining watch, though, as Palmer does something more like actual police work than one sees in crime or espionage films, finding the short cuts through his networks that would give him information the likes of Dalby wouldn't even consider important. It climaxes on a grueling attack on his mind as he tries to resist brainwashing, an impressively surreal moment that nevertheless emphasizes the crudity of the process, like Palmer isn't important enough for bespoke mind-control.

All in a day's work, of course, although Palmer and the film have no illusions about the nobility of such work.


Funeral In Berlin

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon

Following The Ipcress File about a year and a half later, Funeral in Berlin is probably the best of the Harry Palmer films, especially for those who come to them looking for a sort of anti-James Bond. It's the purest game of spy-versus-spy (versus spy?) of the bunch, with a story that demands attention and a reminder of just how present some elements we take for granted were at the time.

It has Palmer (Michael Caine) dispatched to Berlin, where he had been stationed at the time of his arrest, to facilitate the defection of Col Stok (Oscar Homolka), a KGB official about to be transferred from Berlin to somewhere far less prestigious and feeling disrespected, a huge get if for real, and one who demands his extraction be handled by Kreutzman (Günter Meisner), who has proven the most capable and audacious at smuggling people across the border. Palmer will be working with Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), a co-conspirator in the larceny that got Harry blackmailed into the secret service (although Harry kept his mouth shut). He immediately finds he has the attention of model Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), and while Harry isn't necessarily one to feel she's too beautiful for the likes of him, he's not a big believer in coincidence, either.

More so that the other films, Funeral is concerned with the mechanics of spycraft, how one goes about arranging something which must be audacious and almost undetectable, linking the skills of both street criminals and officials at anonymous desks doing boring file-pulling. The filmmakers put together a lean, streamlined tale with very few unnecessary parts, even though some may look like needless procedural detail. The main set-pieces of extractions are thrilling and full of a sort of whimsy amid the serious business, and as before, the ensemble around Caine is well-chosen: Everybody easily embodies what they appear to be, enough to keep everything moving forward in parallel with the audience not necessarily questioning more than they are meant to, and easily maintain that sense even their hidden agendas are revealed. The key to being a good spy, apparently, is presenting as much truth as one can so as not to slip up, and a good thriller reveals the parts of the lie that matter without making one feel a fool for missing it.

Which, inevitably, leads to something devastating for the seemingly aloof Palmer: On the one hand, he finds himself still quite capable of rage even beyond the manipulation by friends and foe that he has come to accept as par for the course. For as cynical as he is, he's not actually close to amoral, and while it's been fun to see him puzzle his way through things and adapt when he can't, there are points at the film where he's got to deal with anally not being who he had hoped and the fact that an enemy rather likes him despite it all. It's not a big breakdown scene, but one does get enough of a sense of Harry that it's not exactly surprising that he's done all he could to leave this life behind by the start of the next movie.


Billion Dollar Brain

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the all-region Australian box set at Amazon

It's easy to get kind of excited but also somewhat wary when getting ready to watch Billion Dollar Brain: This is the most overtly spy-fi premise of the three Harry Palmer stories, often treated as more grounded than the rest of the genre, but it's also got Ken Russell in the director's chair, and maybe a screwy story will allow for a preview of Russell's later, stranger work. Or maybe it will just be a mess.

As it starts, Palmer (Michael Caine) is working as a low-rent private eye, finishing another tawdry divorce case only to find prior employer Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) waiting for him, looking to bring him back into the fold. Palmer refuses, but also takes a call from a recorded voice that wants to hire him to deliver a sealed package to Helsinki, where he's to meet American comrade Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden), though it's his paramour Anya (Françoise Dorléac) who is at the airport when he arrives. These two threads are, of course, the same case, with Palmer realizing he's smuggling eggs filled with a dangerous virus, and that Newbigen is working for - and plans to recruit Harry into - an anti-communist organization led by a former General Midwinter (Ed Begley Sr.) whose activities are plotted by a fancy computer. Harry is dispatched to Latvia to facilitate a revolution before arriving at Midwinter's Texas compound.

If it were a better movie, Billion Dollar Brain would be ripe for rediscovery. It's not just that it's ahead of time on seeing the dangers of artificial intelligence and "patriotic" American organizations whose symbols are too Nazi-adjacent for it to be a coincidence, but either Len Deighton's novel or John McGrath's screenplay has also zeroed in on the very specific point that these things are actually not that bright, easily manipulated and played by grifters who, sure, maybe agree with some of the goals but mostly want to drain the big rich moron terrified of paying taxes as much as possible. The film is at its most memorable when Begley is full of bluster in his weird compound or addressing his large but deeply silly militia. It's an insight that many are still just coming around to 60 years later, and for all that Russell and company have great fun with the insanity of it, they're still to be taken seriously as threats, if only for the chaos they create if not for their ability to achieve their goals.

Unfortunately, there wind up being a few too many threads going on here for the whole thing to form a good pattern. The deadly bioweapon, the astroturfed Latvian rebels, and Newbigen's scheming all wind up at cross-purposes to each other, there's not really a great spot for Anya inside all of this, and as much fun as it is to see Oscar Homolka's Colonel Stok again, he feels more like fanservice than a clever insert. There's something that seems like it has real potential at the core - is Harry more disgusted with the way everyone in the spy business uses each other to join up with Newbigen to leach off Midwinter or horrified at how these cavalier monsters could get a lot of well-intentioned Latvians killed? - and the idea that trying to fight something as incoherent but well-funded as this organization is actually really difficult could fold in there, but it never all comes together, rather than just being a bunch of things happening.

Indeed, it's mostly good at the extremes, whether that be Michael Caine continuing to charm and seduce as the smart, pragmatic Palmer or the broadest American nonsense. There's some fun in between, but the film doesn't fully figure out how to have capable agents tussle with screwy villains.

Hong Kil-dong (The Story of Hong Gil-dong)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon

I was a tad surprised to see Shin Dong-heon's 1967 animated features seemingly owing more to Disney and other American animation houses than those of Japan, but why not? Despite the two countries being physically close, Japanese occupation was well within living memory and there were plenty of American army bases in the country on top of Hollywood's global reach. It does, nevertheless, make is somewhat ironic that the preservation and restoration of this film hinged on a Japanese print.

The film itself starts with Minister Hong (voice of Lee Chun-sa) being told by a fortune-teller that he must kill his concubine's son Gil-dong (voice of Kim Suil) in order to avoid a doom of his own. He doesn't have the heart to do it (which is good, because it's a ruse by his envious wife) and instead exiles Gil-dong. Gil-dong accepts this stoically, and soon meets Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won), a diminutive but spunky wanderer, and the pair make enemies of despotic governor Um Ga-jin (voice of Yeom Seok-ju). In order to fight him, Gil-dong studies swordsmanship with Master Baekun (Lee Wu-yeing), during which time Um's power grows and begins to threaten the elder Hong.

The film is based upon a Joseon-era epic that was itself likely inspired by a Korean Robin Hood figure (although the research connecting them would not be published until a couple years after this film), or at least a portion of one version of it, and it being such a large work that a 67-minute film can only cover so much is a bit of a problem: Writer Shin Dong-woo seems to pick the important highlights that form into a story the best, but it's kind of inert. Not boring, really, but maybe too steady - Gil-dong doesn't really evolve much over the film, mostly becoming more skilled with a sword, and his ties to Chadol Bawi, farm girl God-dan and her father, or even the various villains, don't exactly intensify. One expects that all happens over the course of a long novel, but director Shin Dong-heon and screenwriter Shin Dong-woo have beats they need to hit and every extra cel is time and money, so it's streamlined.

It looks great, though, the animation is smooth and the designs are appealing, showing plenty of Disney and Fleischer influence. I'm not sure how far off it is from other Korean animated films of the period - a quick glimpse at the booklet suggests it was a major hit and spawned imitators quickly, along with an immediate follow-up/spin-off for Cadol Bawi. It's a nifty little movie, and while I've kind of harped on its faults because it was a disjointed thing to watch at night - I kept thinking I'd nodded off and missed something only to see that it just leapt forward a bit - it looks pretty great for its origin and period.


Hopi and Chadol Bawi

* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (when available)

Work must have started on Hopi and Chaol Bawi just about as soon as The Story of Hong Gil-dong hit South Korean screens, because it came out the same year, and it certainly seems to benefit both from the previous film's success and from perhaps being less tied to famous source material: It's a bigger, more fantastic adventure that lets the crew from the first stretch in new directions rather than be penned in by respecting the original novel.

With Hong Gil-dong busy with official duties, sidekick Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won) goes out looking for master swordsman Hopi, hoping to learn his lightning sword technique. Hopi saves him from attacking wolves, but disappears into the night, while thief Gomsoe is happy to take credit. Hopi, it turns out, is not the defender of the oppressed that Chadol Bawi imagined, Nevertheless, the three wind up having their paths cross with corrupt officials who intend to cede the northern part of the kingdom to the Jurchen tribe, led by a shapeshifting wizard.

Hong Gil-dong wasn't a bad movie at all, but its central character being unfailingly righteous and heroic could make it feel very predictable; here, the filmmakers let Chadol Bawi's earnest youthfulness take center stage and let Hopi's bitterness and Gomsoe's willingness to go along serve as counterpoints. It puts friction into the picture, and suspense, and the revelation of the tragedy in Hopi's past makes everything more operatic rather than just being spelled out like in the previous movie. It's not really a complicated story, but it lets kids watching identify with Chadol Bawi and feel a little nervous about where Hopi might wind up, which is a genuine emotional hook.

On top of that, the trio gets to occasionally face monsters instead of just bandits and soldiers, which allows director Shin and his compatriots to really let loose, using the tools of animation to have impossible things happen, design exaggerated creatures, and make alpha villain Somasul especially a worthy adversary. Even the less supernatural action scenes such as the attacking wolves toward the beginning are striking. It's a dizzying land of adventure and legend at times, and the animation is pretty darn good, occasionally showing some of the looping that you'd see in the Fleischer cartoons that clearly serve as an inspiration but also some Disney grandiosity.

It can kind of be a lot at times, especially at the end, when you're enjoying the big action sequences but also maybe mentally thinking back and wondering if all these folks being bad guys makes sense; were they ever working against each other before being revealed as allies? It's also got a last-minute revelation that's kind of inevitable even if it's not really set up or hinted at, as much because you kind of need to give Hopi something after all this. That's not a bad thing - it feels right - but it kind of feels like it came out of nowhere.

Perhaps surprisingly, after doing these two features, Shin Dong-heon would not direct another, instead working in television (including a stint at Nelvana in Canada) and writing about music. Perhaps Korean productions got crowded out between American and Japanese animation, or perhaps the overwhelming nature of theatrical animation was overwhelming. Either way, he leaves behind a couple of striking films that deserve to be more than a footnote in the history of global animation.


Well, that's a lot - how's it affect the score?

Dale Evans: 31½ stars
Centipede: 28¾ stars

Dale benefits from the slightly bigger box set, but that can get flipped later!

The Fire Raven

Any word on what the big Lunar New Year movies are this year? There was actually a Chinese-language preview attached to this - something about crime being so rare in a certain town that the police station is targeted for elimination, so the cops start committing small crimes to save their jobs - but the bit with the title went by very fast. The holiday comes relatively late this year and there haven't been a whole lot of Chinese releases reaching Boston recently (it wasn't that long ago that something would grab a screen the same day as a new Star Wars movie a week before Christmas!), so it's been a really quiet where Chinese films are concerned lately. Resurrection has been the most prominent Chinese film in America, and that's from the art-house channel rather than the mainstream one.

The Fire Raven seems to be the biggest New Year's Eve movie in China this year, although Western movies are unusually competitive in that market right now, as Zootopia 2 is a juggernaut and Avatar 3 a pretty big deal. It's playing kind of lousy slots at Boston Common, either very early or very late in the day, and on top of that, after I reserved my seat, the AMC app was kind of flaky about showing the ticket: It would show as a slot taken on in the A-List section, but wouldn't be in my tickets. I had to bring up the email I got sent, which was strange.

Worth catching if that fits your schedule and you like weird action/mystery things, though.


Ni Sha (The Fire Raven aka Hidden Kill)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Not having seen a trailer - a common occurrence with Chinese movies, which will often show up in America without a whole lot of English-language promotion - and having associated writer/director Sam Quah Boon-Lip more closely with another series of crime movies than he maybe should be, I was expecting something pretty different: One of those grim movies set in Thailand or a Thailand-like places but where everyone is ethnically Chinese and speaking Mandarin which allows for more grisly crimes and corrupt cops than something set in China. Instead, it plays like something adapted from a larger-than-life manga, a big screwy adventure that careens out of control at times.

(It's fair to be confused, though - his film Wu Sha, or Sheep Without a Shepherd in English, spawned Wu Sha 2 and Wu Sha 3, which are similar premises and also star Yang Xiao, but are separate stories, while Quah has also directed two films named "Mo Sha", the latter arriving in America as "A Place Called Silence", and this is "Ni Sha" in Mandarin, though, for all I know, these are all different symbols.)

It takes place in the fictitious "Doma City" and what appears to be the near future, just before the local holiday of "Crowmoot" and a local election, which will be influenced by the Air and Ventilation Taxes being levied on the literal Undercity. The crow the camera follows to start the film leads the audience to the murder of Talaura (Huang Yi), a shady talent agent, by someone wearing a crow mask. Lead detective Fang Zhengnan (Janine Chang Chun-Ning) recognizes the sketchbook left at the scene as one drawn by her foster brother Tianyang (Peng Yuchang) when he witnessed a murder on a train 15 years ago while he and Zhengnan hid from conductors. To Zhengnan's partner Edward (Wang Xun), that makes Tianyang the prime suspect, but Tianyang's "eagle eye" for detail finds discrepancies, leading them to believe that someone is trying to avenge that murder, with fight promoter Shang Zhan (Alan Aruna) and gangster Tongcai (Hai Yitian) likely next on the hit list.

Tianyang also has a prosthetic leg that can do some pretty neat tricks, and the attempt on Shang's life is larger-than-life in an almost slapstick way that may, admittedly, have been more delightful considering that I was expecting a far more dour movie. Quan often seems like he's got a notecard file filled with elevated action world-building details that he's stitching together because this is not the sort of thing he's known for and he might not get another chance, and sometimes it can be a lot of fun - the way one of Talaura's accomplices gets taken out is hilarious cartoon violence - but sometimes it can just be a lot: The 15 years earlier segments have 15 years earlier segments of their own, and a lot of revelations tend to feel kind of random, in that you see that, sure, this character has been around and could slot into that position, but Quan's script usually has to flash back to even make you notice them rather than make one immediately realize that this fits. Chekhov's bionic leg sits on the mantel for what seems like a good long while.

It's still kind of fun, in large part because Chang Chun-Ning and Peng Yuchang are allowed to hit the ground running, with Quan presenting this pair as folks who have apparently solved other cases together, with what feels like a natural pre-existing vibe and upbeat, energetic attitudes despite the fact that the story shovels tragic backstories and an environment that can grind one down. They're charismatic problem-solvers who work well together, with enough folks like Wang Xun, Xu Jiao, Huang Xiaoming, Hai Yitian providing color as supporting characters to offset a couple guys in important spots who can be kind of bland.

The visuals and action are a good time as well. The design of this world tends toward the colorful and poppy rather than just sleek black or run-down brown, and there's a bit of willingness to push the effects past seamless if it will look cool. Chang Chung-Ning and the stunt team acquit themselves well enough when asked to get into a fight, although sometimes the action feels like a few more takes and resources might have made it better; for example, there's a point in a car chase when barrelling through tunnels full of construction has gotten two vehicles tangled in the same plastic mesh and the audience has barely had time to wonder what they're going to do with this before it's over. There's also a pretty decent train-based climax which feels like coming full circle on top of how setting an action sequence on a train makes it 23% better most of the time.

There's also an extended, impressively violent epilogue that, for as good as its best bits of mayhem are, tends to underline how Quan is seemingly trying to cram a lot of bits into one movie, and he also seems to have pushed the Chinese censors about as far as they're willing to go in terms of a killer not getting properly punished, even in sort-of-Malaysia rather than the mainland to the point where one might remember the intertitles tut-tutting about vigilantism as much as anything else. This isn't exactly surprising - Sheep without a Shepherd worked in large part because it leaned into how a viewer wanted folks to get away with something - and I hope he's got more chances to do fun adventure as opposed to gloomy crime, whether that's making this into the series it seemingly should be or not.

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 05: Rage and The Assassination Bureau

This round's discs are coincidentally from the same boutique house, as it turns out, though that's about all they've got in common. I'd love to order some more of these Imprint Blu-rays, even if they often get domestic versions pretty quick as if to taunt me (you're welcome). Real shame about shipping and tariffs going nuts over the past few years (out maybe the cheap shipping was just unsustainable).

Anyway, Dale rolled a 4 and landed on Rage, although, full discourse, that was her second roll. Her first had her hit The Stewardess 3D, and while I'm not above that, the active shutter glasses weren't charged. Maybe another day!

Centipede, then, rolled a 14 and reached The Assassination Bureau. Our, shall we say, The Assassination Bureau Limited, which a number of the film's special features remind us is the full title. Somehow I missed it being based on an incomplete novel by Jack London in the opening credits, which is probably not that strange, although one does really think of London as being defined by a specific group of his work. It also took me a little while to figure that it was set in London's time rather than the late 1960s when it was made. I figured it was just stylish.

The last round ended in a tie; how about this one?

Rage

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (when available), or buy the disc at Amazon

Rage is kind of a weird film: It looks like the sort of grimy little movie that makes one grudgingly appreciate its nastiness, but its parts seem mismatched and its heart is a bit too close to the right place. I suspect that being removed from its original context hurts it a bit: Folks who are never truly out of communication range maybe don't understand just how screwed one can be between point A and point B, on the one hand; on the other, not only did Sorcerer come out ten years later, but the audience for this has probably had more chances to see The Wages of Fear as well. You know there's a better movie that involves driving trucks over dangerous bridges out there.

Which is not exactly what this movie is about; it starts by introducing the audience to Reuben (Glenn Ford), an alcoholic American doctor working in a Mexican mining company town who is just functional enough to know his limits, and Perla (Stella Stevens), one of a number of "entertainers" brought into town who decides he looks pretty good and stays to stake her claim when the rest leave. One of Dr. Reuben's patients is a pregnant woman (Maura Monti) who will likely need a Cesarian, which Reuben feels is beyond his current capacities, though her husband Antonio (Armando Silvestre) trusts him. As it turns out, he'll need Dr. Reuben to come to their house, but the thing is, another miner (David Reynoso) has contracted rabies and quickly passed the point of no return - and Reuben's dog has bitten him. The injection he needs within 48 hours is in the opposite direction of Antonio's house, but Antonio insists…

There's the outline of a nifty little thriller in there, but there's just one problem: It doesn't really need Perla, and the filmmakers not only spend a lot of the film's first half on her flirting and teasing after deciding she likes Reuben, but have to make a concerted effort to get her in the jeep with him and Antonio as they try to make it to the city where rabies medication can be found in time. There's maybe room for a third person in that vehicle, especially if she's going to realize that Reuben is more or less of a man than she previously thought, but this group doesn't result in any sort of three-way tension. All the dangers are external, and a lot of the time spent with Perla feels low-stakes compared to Reuben and Antonio.

Still, you can see where this would be pretty great with the right characters - the self-loathing Ford brings forth for Reuben casts the right sort of shadow but isn't so overwhelming that Perla looks like a fool, and Stevens lets herself be the worn kind of brassy despite still being in her bombshell era. Armando Silvestre's Antonio is being foolish but he hits a nice note here, dancing around being unreasonable but not quite looking the fool; there's a fair amount implied about he's less stupid than in over his head and ready to value his trust in Reuben over how another doctor might treat the wife of a poor mine worker.

The setting and suspense pieces are nice as well: The mining town feels cheap and temporary but functional, and the little details like characters' pets and the banter of the girls tend to ring true. Bits like driving a truck over a tiny bridge or crossing the desert through punishing heat have a good sense of desperation. The last bit - an attempted hijacking of a school bus - is trying for this but seems a step too far, an attempt to force imminent danger and how panicked the characters are of the need to beat the clock. It's not the right finale for this movie, highlighting how it's got the right bones but maybe not the right flesh.

The Assassination Bureau

* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the Arrow disc at Amazon

Jaws and Star Wars are often talked about as the beginning of the blockbuster era, and that's so from a release-patter and business sense, but the form seems to owe as much to James Bond as anything else, and The Assassination Bureau feels a bit like a crucial evolutionary step between them: It's got the same vibe as the Bond movies, but also the grandiose production values of the widescreen epics that preceded them. It's grand but has no belief that it's important, winking at the audience and finishing on a kind of bloated set-piece, the sort of fancy but lightweight thing that has taken the movies over fifty years later to many critics' chagrin.

It opens with Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg), a single woman of the early Twentieth Century who would be an investigative reporter were that avenue open to her in England. She has, however, discovered what she believes to be a shadowy organization behind a number of high-profile killings, pitching the story to Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas) and continuing to research it. When she finds this Assassination Bureau headed by Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed), she hires it to eliminate him, and he accepts, figuring that this will be a way for him to clean house, as his family founded it as targeting those whom the world would be better without as opposed to the purely mercenary agency it has become. Sonya continues to report on the story by trailing him, not realizing that Bostwick is part of the Bureau's board and eager to remove the too-idealistic Ivan.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really, but it doesn't have to; the fact that London's version of the novel was little more than a sketch finished by Robert Fish means that the filmmakers have a lot of room to play, sending the pair on a merry chase through pre-World War I Europe full of colorful costumes, elaborate sets, and deadpan black humor. It's never very serious but never looks down on its own premise by treating it entirely as a joke, and the filmmakers find many ways to have a good time, whether it's killers and marks bouncing around a busy bordello full of scantily-clad women, Ivan trying to get his murder done outside of Sonya's disapproving eye, or a funeral where you know someone is going to escape from the coffin but the shell game and delight at letting the audience watch is on full display.

And, of course, there's Rigg & Reed as a perfectly complementary couple: Sonya starts out fussy and prudish despite her appetite for adventure and intrigue, while Ivan is rakish and amoral by Sonya's lights but has joie de vivre and a personal code without it being overbearing. They are of course going to fall in love and Sonya will probably loosen up more than Ivan becomes serious, but in the meantime they're going to banter and poke at each other and look great doing it. It works in large part because while these are both broadly-sketched characters, the actors are very earnest and relatable, and that makes a fine contrast to Savalas's sophisticated but smug villain. The cast is filled out by people playing often-silly caricatures that don't really have time to wear out their welcome because of the movie's episodic structure.

It climaxes with Reed's Ivan fighting a whole bunch of German goons on a zeppelin, and for better or worse, it's a surprisingly Marvel-feeling sequence for 1969, a crazy aerial environment with a larger than life hero slugging it out against mostly anonymous jobbers (whom the hero often tosses to their death a little more casually that one might like), the effects pretty good for their time but looking dated not long after. It's fun, make no mistake, but it's a little too big and chaotic in the way that more recent films of this sort often are.

I'm fine with this - more than fine, really, because I do take a sort of strange delight in finding that the things that people describe as "the problem with 21st Century Hollywood movies" have been present all along or everywhere. I think that it also makes The Assassination Bureau kind of ripe for rediscovery as a big adventure of a familiar sort with a pair of stars that people might mainly know from later works (Gladiator and Game of Thrones) at their peaks.


So where do these two discs from Australia leave us?

Dale Evans: 22½ stars
Centipede: 23 stars

Still very close, with lots more game to play!

While You Can: Scarlet and Dust Bunny

I'm a bad "the guy you know who sees everything and recommends the good stuff online" these days, but it's especially acute with these two movies that I quite liked and which I knew were going to be short-timers. They're fun and deserve the biggest screens you can see them on, and they've got maybe a day or so of that left, as both seem to have got these releases to fill screens before the blockbusters arrive on the 19th.

Scarlet might be back on Imax screens come 6 February, depending where you live; none of the other things being released that day seem likely to bump Send Help and, at least in the Boston area, big anime releases tend to get the big screen, and this release may give Sony Pictures Classics more reason to open it wide: The 12-18 November run is an Oscar qualifying release, but while LA and NYC have traditionally been enough for that, this getting Imax screens in ten cities. There doesn't seem to be an animated feature shortlist, but of the 35 qualified features there are six big-studio ones (The Bad Guys 2, Dog Man, Elio, KPop Demon Hunters, Zootopia 2), two big animes (Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer), and a few wild cards (this, Arco, Fixed, The Legend of Hei 2, Night of the Zoopocalypse). I don't know how many Academy members/voters there are in the Boston area, or the other places it's released, but it could be the difference between being 6th in the voting and 5th, and thus being able to be advertised as an Academy Award Nominee when it gets its regular release.

I must admit, the idea that Sony has rented out the biggest screen at Assembly Row for a week on the off chance that Frederick Wiseman decides to watch some anime tickles me. It should be there tomorrow (Wednesday), then bumped to a regular laser screen on Thursday, then so long for a month and a half.

Dust Bunny, on the other hand, is more a "grab some screens during a window between big weekends and hope you get lucky" play. It's got a 2024 copyright date on the end, so it's possible Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions weren't really sure what to do with it for a year or so, and I kind of get that. It's a weird one that probably mostly appeals to folks who know who writer/director Bryan Fuller is, and maybe folks figure that television/streaming is its natural home because that's where he's done almost all of his work. It'll look really cramped there, though - it's got a super-wide 3.00:1 aspect ratio and a lot of detail - and I'd kind of love to see if it would hit with a bigger crowd, or a different one. It was kind of hardcore nerds.

It's playing Boston Common & the Seaport on Wednesday, just matinees at the Common on Thursday, and after that, you have to head to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, where it's holding spots until the Christmas releases.

I wonder how both will play with younger viewers, too - Scarlet is PG-13 and Dust Bunny is R, both for violence, and I kind of wonder if that would be reversed if Scarlet used guns and Dust Bunny used knives. They both feel like things that could drop tween/teen jaws.


Hateshinaki Sukâretto (Scarlet)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 December 2025 in AMC Assembly Row #1 (limited release, Imax Laser)
Where to stream it (when available)

Scarlet may be writer/director Mamoru Hosoda's best since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and it's not like the other films he's made since haven't been some of the best anime coming out of Japan. It's certainly his most ambitious. Those ambitions aren't subtle, but they're earnest, and he's willing to let them wind up a frayed mess by the finale where some might engineer a more pat resolution. Heck, it feels like he can see the audience watching for the moment when he cheats and dances around it.

Scarlet (voice of Mana Ashida) is a princess in 16th Century Denmark, beloved of the people and her father King Amleth (voice of Masachika Ichimura), a pacifist who favors negotiation with his neighbors rather than competition. But, well, something is rotten in the State of Denmark, and Amleth's brother Claudius (voice of Koji Yakusho) usurps the throne and marries Queen Gertrude (voice of Yuki Saito), and while Scarlet aims to take revenge, he strikes first, poisoning her. She wakes up in The Otherworld, a purgatorial afterlife out of time, and when she finds out Claudius is there as well, sets out to finally end his existence. What she doesn't count on is falling in with Hiriji (voice of Masaki Okada), a paramedic from 21st Century Tokyo, who is kind-hearted and even treats the foes Scarlet fights along the way to confront Claudius in his castle near the gate to the next world.

Along the way, Scarlet is a frequently-dazzling piece of animation that mixes its traditional and digital pieces in smart ways: The cel-shaded CGI Otherworld looks kind of uncanny while the hand-drawn Denmark feels real, but not jarringly so; the two styles are just similar enough that one might not necessarily clock a difference in style versus tone, especially during a later visit to what may be the living world. There are more action beats than Hosoda usually goes with, with swordfighting that's exciting enough for one to notice there's quality choreography, and a fantastic dragon that explains its purpose with action rather than any exposition. It's more intentionally multi-ethnic than anime often is - it feels noteworthy that many of the nomads Scarlet and Hiriji encounter are Middle Eastern, both fitting the desert environment and perhaps a reference to how many laborers in Japan are Kurdish and other MENA refugees - and merges its influences well.

The action is intense, but there's also a fair amount of fun amid the intensity, with the Hamlet references playful ("get thee to a monastery!") and a bit more fun for those of us who have seen Hamnet a week earlier. That's kind of important because Hosoda is putting Scarlet and Hiriji through the ringer for a purpose: Hiriji's quiet decency does not quite seem naive compared to Scarlet's grim desire for revenge - he's aware that he comes from a more peaceful era - but it's a constant, non-judgmental reminder that Scarlet has fallen from the girl who truly believed in her father's ideals, and regaining them is hard; she's seen too much and committed to doing too much. We've seen her shed the lovely princess gown and put on armor like she'd decided that was her true self, and her glimpse of Hiriji's world is both inspiring and the cause of some despair - how can there be a place like that when so many suffer?

It's that confusion that makes her final confrontation with Claudius raw and stressful - she's been both laid low by Claudius and Gertrude's betrayal and hurt as she has crossed a barren wasteland, but has also seen the good examples of Amleth and Hiriji, and how they have had an effect on those she would see as enemies. She wants to do the right thing, but knows that any kindness on her part will be met with violence and cruelty by Claudius. One can feel Hosoda trying to find a resolution to this that is both hopeful but honest, and doesn't use the circling dragon as a heavenly deus ex machina that says everything will be put right, and he mostly manages it. It's tricky and messy, but then, one shouldn't be completely reassured that things will work out.

Here's hoping that Sony's gambit to get this in front of some Academy voters so they can market this as an Oscar Nominee in February works; it's a worthy film that deserves the boost.


Dust Bunny

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 December 2025 in Alamo Seaport #1 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) (Prime pre-order link)

Somewhere around the middle,Dust Bunny becomes rather a lot, piling more and more on but not necessarily paying things off to make room, writer/director Bryan Fuller maybe being a little too coy about the nature of his genre crossover and not quite having the time to service everything he's got in play without tipping his hand too much. But even when you can see the movie straining, Fuller is filling a Barry Sonnenfeld-shaped void at the movies that I hadn't quite realized was there, in a way that's very much his own. It's instantly recognizable for those who have seen his TV work, and makes you wonder why he hasn't done film before.

The story at least seems simple enough - eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is convinced there is a monster under her bed, and the disappearance of the parents who pooh-poohed the possibility doesn't exactly give the audience reason to suppose that the lint underneath coalescing into something is anything but what it looks like. A neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) catches her attention, especially when she seems to see him slaying a dragon late at night in Chinatown. She offers him money to kill her monster, but the fact that she has seen his "monster-slaying" activities puts him in a bind, and the pair of them in danger.

That sequence with the neighbor and the dragon and everything around it is a delight, a merger of elaborate production design, whimsical choreography, and well-used visual effects that sets the stage for the film's heightened world and balances the different perspectives of Aurora and the unnamed neighbor without tipping its hand too much. It's full of movement that is fluid but also kind of unnatural. A thing one can't help but notice in this and other scenes at this end of the film is that Fuller doesn't have Mikkelsen or Sloan speak when their characters wouldn't, trusting their particular body language to say what needs to be said and allowing them to demonstrate and withhold in a way that feels natural. The action piece that balances the film on the other end is a different beast, chaotic and with a fair amount of talk to make things clear, but that's kind of right, in its way; the film is setting up and resolving mysteries through action, and each fits that purpose.

The rest of Dust Bunny, filled with contention between the central pair and those in their orbit, is an odd duck. It's the rare movie that gets an R rating for "some violence", and I wouldn't be surprised if the studio spent the last year trying to squeeze it into a PG-13 - I suspect it's the use of guns rather than fantasy weapons that keeps that from happening - and because it feels like the sort of thing that made tweens go for Tim Burton 40 years ago, an ornate darkness with corners to explore where every character worth the audience's affection has innocent and cynical sides in conflict (I'd have little trouble recommending it to my 14/15-year-old nieces). It can't quite square that circle, and you can kind of feel Fuller circling around something about violence being difficult to escape once it's unleashed or monsters inside everyone but not quite landing, seemingly struggling to turn his script into a story that does more than look cool and make you grin at its eccentricity.

That eccentricity is a ball, though, with the visual team going full-on maximal in the extremely wide screen frame - it is very much from the imagination of the creator of Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls - and the combination of puppetry and digital animation for the titular monster is nifty: It must, at various times be unnerving both believable and unbelievable in turn, and mostly manages that. One can feel Mads Mikkelsen getting into a groove as the movie goes on, his weathered cool a perfect sort of contrast with Sophie Sloan's cherubic agitation. David Dastmalchian shows up to steal a bunch of scenes in the end, and Sheila Atim does fairly nice work as someone who is often a catalyst but seems real enough that she's not just there to make things happen. Sigourney Weaver gets a tough draw, her shadowy but stylish operator is threatening but not quite charismatic.

It's a mess, but the visuals and performances and fun soundtrack tend to be elaborate and charming without ever losing track of how it's a kid's scary story set in a John Wick-like world. I had a blast with it, even when it was treading water; it's all the colorful fantasy invention of a Fuller TV show compacted down to about 100 minutes, and I hope Fuller gets to do more like it on the big screen.

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 04: Modesty Blaise and Maybe It's Love

These come quicker when there's no local baseball (and you're not picking up the Fox and/or ESPN services for just a week) and theatrical offerings are thin/the same old Halloween stuff!

So, just before Halloween, Dale rolled an 11 and jumps into a "western" block, landing on Modesty Blaise. Fun fact: This Blu-ray replaces a DVD that was never watched, whose age is pretty easily determined because it's one of several in brightly-colored cases that Fox released to capitalize on the popularity of Austin Powers!

Then two days later, Centipede rolls a 13 and gets to the very end of the first Chinese block and Maybe It's Love. I'm not going to lie, it threw me to see the Shaw Brothers logo before something that was not a genre film, whether it be martial-arts action or horror. These days, you probably only see a Shaw Brothers logo (updated and digitally animated for the twenty-first century) in front of movies made by their associated TV station (TVB, I think, although maybe it's ATV), ironically more likely to be this sort of movie than the kung fu and horror most folks know them for.

So, how did that work out?

Modesty Blaise

* * ¼ (out of four)

Seen 30 October 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

Where to stream it (when available), or buy the disc (used) at Amazon

One reason that I'm much more fond of the first Austin Powers movie than is sequels is that there's something more akin to a real movie under the silliness, and in fact it's probably got more going on than the movies it sends up, a list that includes Modesty Blaise. This is a thin little flick, which may or may not bear much resemblance to the adventure strip which inspired it - I've only occasionally flipped through collections at the comic shop - if only because it's full of Swinging Sixties color rather than the strip's strong black lines.

Its coolness may peak with its first scene, with Monica Zitti's Modesty at ease in her penthouse apartment, bantering idly with her Chinese butler. It's clearly her space rather than that of a mistress, as one might have assumed it to be at the time, and it says her flighty mien might be deceptive. Once she's out of that room and talking with various officials, accomplices, and villains, Vitti and the filmmakers are seldom able to imply or demonstrate that her breezy attitude comes from being so capable that she seldom has to break a sweat; people know who she is and prior adventures are name-checked, but she never feels formidable. Vitti is saying the lines but not adding subtext to them, and it's the sort of cliff-hanging adventure where escaping one scrape puts you in another as opposed to something where one sees Modesty's skills as a master thief even in "here's how the heist went down" retrospect.

Vitti's not bad, really, although it feels like the filmmakers are either reluctant to let her carry the movie or didn't have a completed script at filmmaking, because there is a whole mess of narration from older men explaining to each other what's going on. Dirk Bogarde doesn't quite land as arch-nemesis Gabriel; the take seems consciously unconventional, the super-villain who's kind of a pleasant guy without being an interesting villain. There's no spark between him and Rossella Falk as his dominatrix-adjacent lieutenant, and there seems to be some sort of friction over Bogarde's wig; in the same way Gene Hackman later wouldn't want to be bald throughout Superman: The Movie, Bogarde seemingly makes a point of showing that he hasn't gone gray by ripping it off. Terence Stamp could probably have absolutely walked off with the movie if he wanted to, but he politely hovers just below stealing scenes, like he recognizes that it would be unseemly to overshadow the title character.

It never quite comes together, though; the stakes seem oddly low-key for all this effort, and there's only one really nifty heist sequence. It's a gorgeous-looking movie, at least - you can't go very far wrong putting Monica Vitti in nice outfits, and for the most part, the colorful clothing, locations, and ambiance of the late 1960s looks fashionable - a fashion firmly in the past, but nice aesthetically - rather than garish, and there's much less "oh my, she's a woman but somehow competent!" than one might fear. It's just good enough to still get watched 60 years later, when a lot of things trying to ride the combined waves of James Bond and rock & roll have faded to justified obscurity, and not entirely because the folks in the cast stayed famous.

Kwai Ching (Maybe It's Love)

* * ½ (out of four)

Seen 1 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Kani Blu-ray)

Not currently streaming (buy the disc at Amazon)

I mention a little surprise at seeing the Shaw Brothers logo before this film in the introduction, while the credits had me raising my eyebrows because of few Hong Kong movies I've seen directed by women, especially in this period. Angie Chen On-Kei does not appear to have a particularly distinguished career as a writer-director during the 1980s, and there's a big hole in her career on IMDB and HKMDB that was apparently spent making commercials. Is she as unusual as she seems, or is this just an example of how there's good infrastructure for importing Hong Kong action, in part because there's not a whole lot else like it, but not so much romantic comedies or other pictures targeted at women? Kani's release of this film is one of the few of its ilk I've seen; is it among the best or just the most readily available?

It's a sort of screwball take on Rear Window, at least to start: 12-year-old "Marble" Shu Ker-Ying (Chui Hoh-Ying), handicapped at the hands of her ne'er-do-well father and now being raised by her grandmother (Mok Chui-Jan), keeps going to the police, claiming that she's seen a woman be murdered, although she proves to be mistaken. Not that there's not something going on, occasionally; what's a girl her age to think when she sees gwailo actor Martin (Ronnie) and his wife (Lau Siu-Pool) engaging in some kinky sex through her binoculars, for example? Up on the bluff, a rich man (Stuart Ong) has installed his mistress Rita (Cherie Chung Cho-Hung) in a nice house (which Marble's grandmother occasionally cleans), although his wife (Chan Sze-Kai) occasionally comes poking around. Postman Yau Ju (Kent Tong Chun-Yip) also takes an interest, although he's generally a playboy, also carrying on with Lin (Elaine Jin), the young wife of shopkeeper Wang (Ku Feng), who often seems frustrated and ready to return to the mainland.

There's potential in the screenplay; writer Lillian Lee Pik-Wah is a noted novelist whose name might be familiar from Farewell, My Concubine and Dumplings, and one can see that she's doing something interesting most of the time. Marble and Rita are both outsiders, the one ostracized by the other kids for her handicap and the other for trading on her body. They don't exactly become a found family with Yao Ju (who dreams of being an actor or stuntman, showing his kung fu moves off to the neighborhood kids), but the audience can see how they're in opposite ends of the same boat anyway. There's something really solid in how Marble, who grew up in an abusive household and is permanently scarred from it, has even more difficulty telling sex from violence than the average adolescent and is determined to watch out for it and sound the alarm.

It's a solid foundation to build on, but Chen's first feature is a bit rough; it's got a few very nice scenes but has a bit of trouble establishing a rhythm at times, and the eventual hard turn when it turns out Marble may have seen something after all is wobbly as heck. That's the problem with a lot of takes on Rear Window - it looks very simple in how methodical it is but that's because Hitchcock was a genius and most of the rest of the folks who try to cover the same ground aren't - and Chen doesn't quite land how the last act combines real danger and farce as the violence and willingness to kill this kid bump up against how she is right about the what but wrong about the how in screwball fashion. It's a fun mystery when it's untangled but the audience isn't quite in a place to enjoy that.

Chen doesn't necessarily have a whole lot to work with; there's something about it that seems short on resources, even beyond how it's very much not taking place in an upper-class neighborhood. Young Chui Hoh-Ying proves a very solid center to the movie, despite it being one of just two rules in the databases, but the ensemble around her is shaky, mostly folks who wouldn't have notable careers or whose acting style seems more fit to the studio's period martial arts films. The exception is obviously Cherie Chung, and both she and Chen seem to kind of know it - a scene where she silently but angrily sunbathes to the adults' consternation and adolescent boys' delight doesn't work unless she has movie-star charisma to match her figure, and the way Rita initially toys with Yau Ju or gets frustrated at the locals looking down on her is enhanced by her having that extra bit going on.

Chung and Chen make Maybe It's Love as notable as it is; it's the first Shaw Brothers film directed by a woman and Chung would become a big star who burned bright before retiring relatively young. One wonders what it could have been with just a little more going for it.


Dead heat!

Dale Evans: 20 stars
Centipede: 20 stars

Next entry hopefully coming quick, because i was rolling dice again even before writing this.