All posts by Rod Lott

Martial Arts

One-Percent Warrior (2023)

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One-Percent Warrior — you just know Warren Buffett favors that nickname in krav maga class at the club — isn’t your ordinary martial-arts movie. It’s meta meta meta. And fortunately in a fun way. 

Played by Tak Sakaguchi, Toshiro is a has-been action hero whose trademark of “assassination jitsu” has aged out of audiences’ favor. I don’t know why, because the guy’s so quick and agile, he literally can dodge bullets! 

Toshiro longs to make a “100% pure action film” — none of this choreographed, 15-takes bullshit. (This must be a nod to Sakaguchi and director Yudai Yamaguchi’s recent single-shot epic, Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1.) A decade after his last hit, Toshiro enlists his new apprentice, Akira (Kohei Fukuyama, TV’s Mob Psycho 100), to shoot his comeback vehicle Soderbergh-style (on a smartphone), on an island housing nothing but an abandoned zinc factory.

Call it an ideal location for limb dislocation. Because at the same time, not one but two heavily armed yakuza gangs swarm the isle, thanks to a secret stash of 2 tons of cocaine.

The 20th (!) collaboration between Sakaguchi and Yamaguchi, One-Percent Warrior finds them moving away from the silliness of their past (Meatball Machine, Battlefield Baseball, et al.) and growing up. It’s for the better. Unable to rest on slapsticky laurels, Yamaguchi comes alive via frenetic camerawork, sweeping and surveying the action unfolding throughout the locale. 

It’s nice to see Sakaguchi do his thing free of gimmicky trappings or cartoon gore. A high point finds Toshiro in the dark, subduing his opponents with flying fists and a disorienting strobe flashlight, all scored to George Gershwin’s sublime Rhapsody in Blue.

Had this Japanese flick starred Jackie Chan (instead of name-dropping him) and came out post-Rumble in the Bronx, it would’ve killed at the box office. Instead, it’s set to stream on the little-seen and largely unheard-of Hi-YAH! channel. Give it and Sakaguchi a chance, because One-Percent Warrior has might and a mind. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Creepypasta (2023)

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As my youngest child explained to me years ago, “creepypasta” is more or less the internet’s version of ghost stories and urban legends. (Think Slender Man.) Because they’re shared online instead at campfires or sleepovers, they spread worldwide in a near-instant. The name itself is partly a portmanteau of “copy/paste.” 

Now, explaining Creepypasta, the horror anthology corralling work from eight directors, is scads easier: It stinks. 

In the unimaginative wraparound story, we watch a guy stumble through a mysterious house, where he’s introduced to 10 stories written by a creepypasta author gone missing. Of the 10, a mere three at least held my attention — a ratio so poor, it deserves a bell ringer standing outside Walmart around the holidays. 

Were I feeling generous, I’d up that to four in 10, just for the shadow people story’s oddball scenario of ladies noshing over a charcuterie board as they swap Jerry Maguire-style science facts, like “Your rectum can stretch up to 9 inches in diameter.” I’ll take their word for it. 

The best bits feature a rulebreaker who gets Hellraiser-hooked for watching a forbidden broadcast on TV, a boy’s nocturnal encounter with a tooth fairy, and a child’s “imaginary” friend named Jumby. None breaks new ground, but each achieves effectiveness simply by setting up only what’s required. 

Whether about mirror people, cults, closet monsters or the Grey Man, other segments get bogged down in being too vague or trying to do too much. Both approaches go against the idea of being so sharable. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Murdaritaville (2024)

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Two years ago in Key West, I was dragged to a Jimmy Buffett walking tour. Because if there’s one thing I dislike more than outdoor physical activity in triple-digit temps, it’s the music of “Uncle Jimmy,” as his fervent followers call him. I can’t tell you much about the tour, except I suspect our host trespassed at least once, possibly made things up on the fly, and carried cheaply laminated photos printed from the internet with zero concern for DPI.

All this to say, I’m not the ideal audience for Murdaritaville, Paul Dale’s horror-spoof tribute to Buffett (made before the trop-rock troubadour’s September 2023 passing, lest ye Parrotheads cry “fowl”). But I am the ideal dead meat for its killer, a half-parrot/half-man in skipper’s cap who turns only non-Buffett fans into his own human buffet. In essence, the murderous monster (a dedicated Carter Simoneaux, Dale’s Killer Kites) is like Dexter for the salt-shaker-and-Hawaiian-shirt crowd.

Buffett references aside, I can’t say I dove in to this birdman movie with the unexpected virtue of ignorance, having seen a couple of Dale’s previous pictures in the same comedic vein, most enjoyably Sewer Gators. Among the 50 minutes before the closing credits, too little amuses this time ’round. I enjoyed a throwaway bit with an opera-singing shark (free spin-off idea: Opera Shark) and Dale’s brief return as arrogant TV news reporter Brock Peterson, seen talking to himself while leaving negative feedback for some Uber/DoorDash worker: “Mohammed? One star. That’s for 9/11.”

The movie’s style of humor often veers between the lanes of Abbott and Costello to Airplane! Much of the latter’s influence accounts for fake credits (example: “Armorer: Alec Baldwin”). These gags fall flat not because they run 10 slow-going minutes, but because they botch the spellings of an unforgivable amount of names: Kevorkian, Streisand, Aykroyd, Midler, Friedkin, Epstein, et al. (Hasn’t poor “Hellen” Keller suffered enough?) That sloppiness is indicative of Murdaritaville’s whole, with the major exception of Taylor Fisher’s design of the parrot man.

I think Murdaritaville would land best as a joke trailer, in which the title serves as the punchline. Perhaps those in Buffett’s cult will find more to dig. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (2023)

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As the titular physician, Gang Won-dong (Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula) ditches psychiatry for a more lucrative living: as the charlatan behind an exorcism startup. With YouTube prankster Kang (Lee Dong-hwi of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden) hired for technical trickery, Dr. Cheon chases bank via the gullibility of a desperate citizenry.

Soon, a young woman (Esom, The Queen of Crime) offers them $100,000 to rid the demonic presence lurking inside her little sister (Park So-yi, Lingering). Easy cash, right? It would be, if the possession weren’t legit.

More than a little spirit of Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters lives within Kim Seong-sik’s Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman — right down to the ghost traps, even! But Dr. Cheon’s no Dr. Venkman. Rather than ape Bill Murray’s wiseass act, Won-dong exudes the cucumber cool of Sherlock-era Benedict Cumberbatch.

Meanwhile, Volcano High’s Huh Joon-ho plays the doc’s nemesis, a villainous mage who looks not unlike Ian McShane. In Lost Talisman’s best set piece, the mage conjures a blue light that hops from villager to villager, ordering them upon contact to attack Dr. Cheon.

As with the aforementioned American blockbuster, this South Korean film mixes the mythic and the mirthful, with first-rate effects that serve the story. The result? Serious franchise potential. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Moon (2023)

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Five years after South Korea’s first moon mission proved a spectacular failure, another generation bravely steps up to try again. Poignantly, among this new trio is Hwang Sun-woo, whose father was among the astronauts who perished in that original endeavor.

The new astronauts’ rocket launches without incident. But just when they’re about to enter lunar orbit, a solar flare knocks out comms. While attempting to fix it, Sun-woo’s zero-grav colleagues are killed in an accident, leaving him in the command module all alone. With a meteor shower en route and an oxygen supply ever-dwindling, Sun-woo’s only hope for survival is the first mission’s flight director and capsule architect, Kim Jae-guk, aka the man he holds responsible for his dad’s death.

As our heroic astronaut trapped on the dark side of the orb of green cheese, Kyung-soo Do is fine, if a bit too wiry for a believable space-cadet build. He seems to have been cast more for looks than acting, which may be the case, as I’ve since learned he rose to fame as a former member of the K-pop boy band Exo. The film’s true emotional weight comes from Sol Kyung-gu (2012’s The Tower) as Jae-guk, doing his damndest to right a past wrong and assuage his own guilt. Essentially, he’s in the Ed Harris role of Apollo 13, with fewer degrees of separation to those above.

It’s impossible to credibly discuss The Moon without mentioning Apollo 13 or The Martian, as writer/director Kim Yong-hwa (the Along with the Gods duology) cribs liberally from both. And that’s fine since he does it so skillfully, accentuating his ticking-clock narrative over expensive effects (impressive though they are) because having Things Go Boom shouldn’t be No. 1 on the call sheet. With technical gabber adding realism (or a convincing approximation) to a precarious situation veering from “all systems go” to “no” and back again, The Moon rises into an intelligent crowdpleaser — hard sci-fi with a soft human touch.

Sometimes that touch is too soft, as when characters lock into awestruck Spielbergian stares, mouth agape. Can you imagine The Martian concluding with Jeff Daniels congratulating his NASA colleagues across the room with Taylor Swift’s hands-in-shape-of-heart gesture? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.