Let’s see, how can I get you all to check out a movie about
lions and tigers and…other big cats roaming free and interacting with humans? The delicate bit is there’s practically no
plot. Ok, how about tons of cast and
crew members got horrifically injured during filming? How does that sound? Or maybe that the human and cat interactions
(like mauling, tackling, scraping) are all real with no trickery? Well if any of that sounds appealing keep on
reading.
This was a passion project from husband and wife team Noel
Marshall (producer: The Exorcist) and
Tippi Hedren (The Birds) who wanted
to spread awareness of lions by making this weird piece that doesn’t directly
educate you on the subject. Instead it’s
done indirectly through observing how these animals interrelate with humans in
this very specific multi-acre compound environment (which was Noel and Tippi’s
real life cat sanctuary).
The terrifically loose narrative involves Noel trying to
pick up his visiting family (which includes Tippi, real life sons John and
Jerry and real life step-daughter Melanie Griffith (Another Day in Paradise)) at an airport somewhere in Africa. Along the way he runs into obstacle after
obstacle that relentlessly delays him. So
after a while the fam decides not wait any longer and takes the bus. When they get to the house they find it
overrun with dozens and dozens of huge fucking lions ‘n shit. Nearly the entire movie has the family doing
their best to try to escape from the creatures.
However, what they don’t know is that these guys are Noel’s friends and
they don’t actually mean any harm. If
they would only give the furry fellas a chance they would find out that they’re
not so bad and there’s nothing to fear.
I supposed this is the message of the picture? Along with: stop hunting down and murdering
these magnificent animals please.
All of the footage is some of the most unbelievable animal
stuff I’ve ever seen. It’s breathtaking
and nerve-racking as hell to see the lions fight with each other, play (very
hard) with humans and run around freely.
It’s all due to the extremely brave crew that stuck their necks out,
literally, to get the footage. There was
a plethora of injuries over the multi-year shoot and many got hurt very badly. One of the unlucky ones was incredible
cinematographer Jan de Bont (Die Hard,
Basic Instinct, Black Rain) who shot this very early in his American
career. He risked his life for this shit
and got scalped by a lion at one point who nearly took his whole fucking head
off.
Roar is a
fascinating film and the story behind it is equally enthralling. I won’t go into it too much but Marshall and
family actually adopted these animals who lived in their house for years before
filming. When they finally got around to
making the damn movie it took another five years to shoot (the picture is
supposed to take place in one day by the way) and they were ravaged by constant
animal problems, injuries and even a huge flood.
Boy is this one strange bird, er, cat. But it’s definitely worth seeing not only
from a crazy filmmaking perspective but also if you’re interested in animals
and their behaviors. It’s a miracle this
thing exists at all.
It’s been twelve years since the US last got a Ring movie which is surprising because the
timeline for another one of these should’ve been never. Does anyone in the states care about this
series? To try for a third picture seems
like a fool’s errand to me. The first
one is completely self contained and unique in the world of horror. The base premise is pure horror material
(watch a video and in seven days a ghost will pop out of your TV and kill you)
but the movie plays out much more like a mystery thriller. It’s almost film noir-ish with the characters
piecing together what happened to this fucked up little girl. Once the full story is discovered and a cure
for the cursed viewer is stumbled upon there isn’t anything else to tell. It’s over.
Vamoose babe.
But the studio execs couldn’t help themselves and went for a
sequel. It was absolutely terrible. You can read what I thought here. Then nothing for a long while. Now we got number three to contend with.
The first thing you should probably know is that this is not
really a sequel even though it’s been touted as such. All evidence shows this is a reboot. Nothing is mentioned of the first two
installments whatsoever, Samara’s backstory is tweaked and certain rules in the
Ring universe are changed.
But here’s how shit goes down. It starts with some dude on a plane who reaches
his seven day milestone. He chats with a
chick across the aisle telling her (the audience) about a video that eventually
kills you after you watch it. She thinks
he’s a weirdo but then all of a sudden the plane goes haywire and Samara murders
the guy. It’s an open question if the
others on the flight survived. Would
Samara massacre a whole airplane full of folks just to take out one man? If everyone on board really did die then that’s
fucking bullshit. The only person that
should die is the cursed individual.
Plus we know what the outcome is when there are witnesses. In the first film the friend of the victim in
the opening scene becomes traumatized.
She ends up in a mental hospital and doesn’t really speak or emote at
all. Did this happen to the passengers
on the plane? We never find out.
Skip to Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki (In Time)) buying the VCR of the guy who
died on the flight at a flea market. He likes
it ‘cause it’s “vintage”. When he takes
the thing back to his way cool warehouse bachelor pad he jams a screwdriver in
the video slot because that’s how you get a VCR to work? What the fuck is he doing? I bet Galecki (who was forty when they made
this (yea the math is a little off but I’ll get to why later on)) was like “do I
really have to do this? I grew up with this
technology and this doesn’t make any damn sense”. Anyway a VHS tape pops out (on its own mind
you, not from the fiddling with the screwdriver) and the good professor lights
up a joint and puts the tape on.
Although I swear I remember the tape starting to play by itself but
whatever.
Skip to our boyfriend/girlfriend main leads, Holt ((Alex Roe
(The 5th Wave)) and Julia
(Matilda Lutz in her first major role), saying their goodbyes to each other
because Holt is off to college. We never
find out why Julia is staying behind at home and not also going to college. There could be a million reasons for this and
it doesn’t really matter, but it’s kinda lazy filmmaking to not even have one
throwaway line to explain.
After six weeks or so Julia gets a Skype call from Holt
except when she picks up it’s some lady looking for Holt and she’s all panicky
spouting cryptic inane shit to get the audience stirred up. Julia decides to investigate and drives to
Holt’s college. She finds Professor
Gabriel who gives her the runaround on Holt and scurries off as quickly as he
can. Thinking this is suspicious Julia tails
him to the seventh floor of one of the main school buildings. She finds that the entire floor has been
taken over by a mess of students and Gabriel conducting some sort of experiment
with the cursed video. There are
countdown clocks on the wall, video projections of scenes from the tape and
what appears to be all out partying. It’s
a pretty strange sight. Eventually Julia
finds Holt and they journey to solve what the shit on the tape is or means.
So this is similar to the first picture except there’s one
big difference. It’s true that in The Ring (and Ringu) our leading ladies were trying to decipher the images on the
tape but they were also looking for a way out of the curse. They only had a week so there was a major ticking
clock element to the story. In Rings everyone knows how to exorcize themselves
of the curse from the get go. Presumably
Professor Gabriel figured this out and told his Guinea pigs. The very large problem though is that we’re
never shown or told just how Gabriel knew to make a copy and show it to someone
else to lift the curse. That’s too big
of a fucking hole to leave in your movie guy.
Again, there’s no reference to the first two films so there needs to be
a discovery of the solution somehow in here and it’s not there. The filmmakers are going on the assumption
the audience knows how this works so they didn’t rehash it. That was a really bad decision.
Now since all of our characters have a certified way of
dealing with the curse there’s no excuse for anyone to die. They have the knowledge to set themselves
free. But guess what? Every single person waits until the last
goddamn minute to do anything about it.
Put yourself in their shoes. Would
you try to relieve yourself of imminent assured death right away or put it off
for six days and twenty three hours? I
get that there needs to be tension ‘n’ shit in your movie but having every character,
except Julia, be negligent and/or braindead doesn’t make me care about
them. They had their wide open shot to
deal with it and they fucked it up. So
fuck them. This is some dumb
scriptwriting fellas.
Spoilers in this next
paragraph, skip to the following one if you don’t want to know Samara’s new
backstory
With Samara’s backstory the filmmakers decided to rewrite
it. The part about her being born pure
evil and infecting her hometown with plight is all there. But the change is her father was one wicked asshole
sonuvabitch that maybe actually wanted a demon child. You see this small town reverend raped a
local girl and then kept her locked up in a secret bunker beneath the church
during the pregnancy. When the baby was born
she had special powers and things went bad in the town so she had to go. I don’t think it’s ever explained but I guess
the father is the one that tossed Samara down the well to kill her. So daddy’s the co-villain in this installment
which I’m fine with because it changes it up enough. Otherwise it’s exactly the same old shit you’ve
seen before.
You’re safe from here
on out
I have to bring up the religious symbolism they threw
in. The
Ring series was never about religion, at least the American ones. The original Japanese picture had some
spiritualism sprinkled in but it was in the background. In Rings
the filmmakers for some reason felt that there needed to be a Christian connection
and imply that Samara’s the anti-Christ.
You got a church, a priest, many visions of crucifixes, you could say
Samara rises from the dead, a flood and a swarm of cicadas (‘cause I suppose
locusts would’ve been just a little too on the nose). I don’t necessarily mind the film trying this
out but at the same time part of why I like the Ring universe is because there aren’t any religious aspects to
it. It’s simply a magical curse and a
nasty chick that comes to kill you in a week.
Usually something like that would have
a religious angle but the concept is so intriguing that extra help isn’t needed
to sell it. It’s non-discriminatory that
way and I like it.
Probably the weirdest aspect to the entire movie though is
that we’re still dealing with a cursed VHS tape. Sure, they make an attempt to update the technology
by converting it to a video file you can watch on a computer. But even that method is outdated or only used
by certain professionals. The real
update is YouTube or some similar video streaming site. But I can understand why they didn’t want to
open that can of worms. If YouTube were
involved everyone in the world would be cursed and then how do you make a copy
and share it to save yourself? Shit gets
way too messy so they sidestepped it.
They also dodged the fact that all of the students who took place in the
college experiment would’ve uploaded the cursed video to YouTube as soon as
they got their hands on it. It’s a
fucking miracle no one did.
However, having the video be available on YouTube was
already done in Sadako 3D, the fifth
film in the Japanese line that came out in 2012. But they went off in a totally bonkers
direction for that picture which I actually kinda enjoyed. That one plays out more like a grindhouse
movie where Sadako (the Samara equivalent) can use her giant hair as a weapon by
twirling it around and there’s an army of half bug half Sadako creatures and
all sorts of stuff. American audiences
would never go for something like that in this context. Maybe if it were its own thing and not a Ring movie. But to completely change the format and
attempt a radically different approach would put too many folks off. So if you like the idea of the Ring but are frustrated with the American
ones then check out the Japanese films.
They’ve made so many sequels and they all do their own distinct thing. I wish the American studios would take more
chances on different tones and styles for sequels but they know that shit doesn’t
really sell here. So we tend to get the
same damn thing over and over.
Rings was shot in
2015 and originally scheduled to come out the same year. But reshoots and schedule changes pushed this
sucker into 2017 (that’s why the math didn’t seem to add up earlier). It’s never good when a film sits for that
long because it shows that the studio has no faith in it. They kinda need to realize the Ring concept isn’t franchise-able. Hey Hollywood, you have to accept it’s only one
movie. And if you’re unwilling to go way
off course then you’re gonna inevitably and boringly repeat yourself.
The changes they made here aren’t nearly enough to breathe
new life into the ol’ gal. Even the last
little twist (minor spoiler) sets up
the idea used in The Ring Two where
Samara is looking for a way to cross over into the real world full time. Look, overall this is bland crap that I’ll
forget about tomorrow. But that was expected
and the sad part is some amount of disappointment goes along with that notion. There’s a tiny piece of your mind that thinks
it could be a surprisingly good piece of work but alas, the odds prove out and the
house wins. So there’s nothing to see
here folks. Keep moving.
Once in a blue moon you come across a movie that touches
your soul. It’s like love at first
sight. You feel like this piece was made
just for you and you know instantly that you’ve got something incredible on
your hands. My latest encounter with
this special sensation came in the form of Lone
Wolf and Cub.
Based on the manga of the same name this series of films
(six in total) follows the saga of former shogun executioner Itto Ogami
(Tomisaburo Wakayama (Black Rain)). He was setup by the Yagyu clan to look like a
traitor so he would lose his prestigious post.
He also finds his wife murdered while their one year old son, Daigoro, survives
the ordeal. Ogami vows vengeance for all
of this disgrace but doesn’t outright go after the Yagyu. Instead he and his son, now three or four
years old, become assassins that wander the country. They drift from one assignment to the next
and leave a shitload of carnage in their path.
They are on “the demon way in hell”.
Look I’ll try not to bore you by going on and on about how
undeniably badass and unbelievably beautiful this series is. It’s also very intimidating because I know I
won’t be able to do it proper justice. So
here are just a few brief things.
These films are gorgeously made. Most of the time scenes take place outdoors,
or at least you can see to the outside, and the filmmakers photographed the
Japanese landscape wonderfully. There’s
certainly a lot of respect for nature and all it gives to us. The variety is stunning as well. We visit open fields, rock quarries, snow
covered mountains, hot springs, sand dunes and a million other locations. There’s always something different and nice
to look at.
And holy shit is this series violent. I mean the body count alone is off the
charts. According to moviebodycounts.com
(I shit you not that’s a real site) the last film, White Heaven in Hell, racks up 169 kills. And that’s only one out of six! Jesus, so many fucking people die. They’re mostly done in by Ogami’s untouchable
skills as a swordsman which you would think would get kinda dull after a while,
but it somehow doesn’t. It’s so much fun
to watch the man take down everyone in sight with astonishing
gracefulness. The films even introduce this
repeated scenario of Ogami going up against dozens and dozens of bad guys as a
climax starting with the third one, and each and every time it’s fuckin’ crazy. I think my favorite of those is at the end of
Baby Cart in the Land of the Demons. Maybe that’s because it was the third time
putting together a sequence like that so they figured out the most exciting way
to do it.
Most of the deaths are pretty gnarly too with vivid bright red
blood spraying like a goddamn firehose out of some poor bastard’s body when
they get the sword taken to ‘em. It’s gloriously
over the top and that helps to define the series. But these movies aren’t trying to be funny
(at least I don’t think they are).
There’s plenty of magic, impossible maneuvers and situations where our
protagonists power their way out of certain death, but it’s all presented
straight up as if you come across this shit every day. I applaud the filmmakers for making something
so stylized and never once winking at the camera.
Everyone does a great acting job in this but Wakayama stands
above all as Ogami. He has such a strong
presence and he never compromises his formidability or his honor. He will cut down anyone without thinking
twice (including women and, oh fuck, children) but he also clearly loves his
son. He would never allow anything to
happen to little Daigoro and will always protect him. Ogami keeps his word, sticks to his mission
and is one badass motherfucker.
Ok, here’s how I would rank the movies from best to really
fucking good:
Baby Cart at the River
Styx (film 2)- A masterpiece from start to finish and probably the most
even all the way through. And I guess this
is where John Carpenter got the three storms from for Big Trouble in Little China because the Hidari brothers (or “Gods
of Death”) are dressed almost exactly the same and they each wield their own
unique weapon. Although, the Hidaris use
way less magic, if any. Actually
Carpenter more likely got this idea from Shogun
Assassin which took the first two Lone
Wolf and Cub pictures and mashed them together for the US market.
The Hidari Brothers
The Three Storms
Sword of Vengeance
(film 1)- You got your classic setup movie that actually only hints at how
insane the series progresses. It’s very good
and definitely your starting point if you plan to take on this sonuvabitch.
Wow, that's one of the coolest title screens ever
Baby Cart in Peril
(film 4)- This one may be the most visually varied and striking. You got different shit like a sorcerer with a
fire sword, a topless lady out for revenge that has a tattoo of a demon child
groping her tit and crucial backstory for our main villain.
Don't you dare fuck with her, she'll slice you wide open
Baby Cart in the Land
of Demons (film 5)- At first Ogami must face and defeat five separate
warriors to achieve the whole story of who they want assassinated and why. Then there’s a weird middle section that
focuses on Daigoro and his unfortunate run in with a pickpocket. Finally Ogami proceeds with the task he was
hired to perform at the beginning of the film and ends with the best of the big
battle sequences where Ogami takes on fifty plus dudes all by his lonesome.
Ouch
Baby Cart to Hades
(film 3)- A little too much rape in this one which I guess is why it ranks
lower for me. But there’s a cool virtue fight
between Ogami and this mercenary that eventually carries through. Maybe that should’ve been more of the focus.
Looks like Ogami has his hands full in this one
White Heaven in Hell
(film 6)- The head of the Yagyu throws his last couple of guys (and gal) at
Ogami and Daigoro to try to finish this.
I guess by the sixth installment things started to feel a little same-y
but it’s still fantastic and does a good job of fleshing out the main villain and
his clan even more.
A lot of blows to the head in this series
Now even though every picture is episodic there are common
threads that run throughout. The biggest
is the Yagyu threat. This guy and his
people really hate Ogami and want to see him wiped off the face of the earth. The other commonality is that a little more
background gets dished out to show you how and why Ogami and Daigoro are in
their current state of affairs. By the
end you really get a good understanding of how everything fits together. So I guess what I’m trying to say is I would
recommend watching the films in the right sequence to get the full effect. And trust me, you want the full effect.
Let’s wrap it up. These
stories and characters are timeless.
It’s about restoring honor, preserving integrity, slashing various body
parts off, enduring in the face of death, showing your four year old son it’s
ok to kill bad dudes, protect the defenseless (sometimes), maintain a code and
all that great shit. A huge theme in
here is not fearing the path you’ve selected for yourself. In almost every movie (if not every single
one) someone points out to Ogami that he and his son are essentially dead men
walking or questions their actions and his response is always the same: they’ve
chosen their way, they’re walking in hell.
Interestingly I don’t think destiny is ever mentioned. They never say they’re being guided by a
force or that events are set in stone and they can’t alter them. Instead they take the approach that every action
is their own and they will stick by those decisions even if it costs them their
lives. No regrets, no worries. They’re incensed, almost possessed to fight
every step of the way and keep moving forward.
I know this was criminally underwritten because there are so
many things I didn’t bring up like Daigoro’s crazy haircut, the awesome fuckin’
soundtracks, the empowering female presence throughout the series, the baby
cart Ogami wheels around that’s full of hidden blades and guns that he
frequently uses to annihilate his enemies with, every film is a lean mean eighty
mins and so much more. But the best
thing to do now is shut up and let you take in these masterworks for yourself. You won’t regret it.