Whenever I hear about a new movie coming out that involves fighting of some sort, my first reaction is, is it from Lions Gate? It seems like they’ve been doing a lot of that lately, and they sent out a copy of one of their newest, Muay Thai Fighter, for me to review.

Muay Thai Fighter follows a couple of friends who train in the titular martial art. But one day, they find their training camp has been shut down, and so they do about the only thing left to them that makes any sense, and that’s to take their muay thai fighting on the road, where they can bring it back. But what they’ll find in the underground fight circuits they end up in is a whole lot more than they bargained for. Can they survive their ordeal and bring back their ancient fighting style, or will they fall prey to the horrors–and temptations–all around them?

Where Muay Thai Fighter distinguishes itself from a lot of other fighting movies is in its first ten minutes. There’s actually a lot of history of the sport delivered here, as you get a surprise education in the sport. It’s not every day that you get a little bit of history thrown in–it’s almost like a miniature documentary in the midst of a larger whole. There will be some laughs in here, a little bit of romance, and a whole lot of sports-style drama as kids from the back end of nowhere fight to become something more than they were in the grandest tradition.

It’s a surprisingly entertaining film, lots of fun, with plenty of things to like. Frankly, I had a great time here, because this kept things moving along at a good, brisk pace and didn’t slow down with a lot of unnecessary points. It’s put together a lot better than you might think, and goes down a lot of interesting paths, plot-wise, and has plenty of good surprises thrown in just to make things interesting.

If you like martial arts movies, sports movies, or good old fashioned drama, then you’ll get along a lot better than you might think with Muay Thai Fighter. There’s plenty for most anyone to enjoy, and it will prove shockingly uplifting for a movie like this. It would be easy–entirely too easy–to underestimate Muay Thai Fighter, and doing so would be a tragic mistake.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Muay Thai Fighter a full ten out of ten. This one came out of nowhere, did an incredible amount of damage, and kept me very satisfied for two hours, which is profoundly rare in a film any more. It should be just as good for you, so if you get a chance to catch this one, don’t let it slip by.

Longtime horror buffs will be able to tell you in a heartbeat that, if you ever see a painting that starts to leak blood, it’s a bad sign.  And considering that’ll happen within the first five minutes of Ghost Stories Volume 4, you know you’re in for a real crazy ride.

It’s generally the same story here–once again our wild, crazy gang of underage lunatics will be rampaging their way through ghost hunting and having a hilarious time doing it.

The strange thing this time around is that they will WILDLY deviate from the original Japanese.  This time around, just for the hell of it, I put on the English subtitles (which are, theoretically, a translation of the Japanese dialogue) and ran the English audio track at the same time.  What I got was almost two different movies.  The subtitle track is a lot more sedate, with actual, reasonable dialogue, while the dub track is a huge array of jokes on various points, including Ghost Stories’ favorite angle, weed jokes.

The anime by itself is pretty interesting, with a handful of good jokes and some spooky moments, but when you kick on the English language track, what you get is a wildly different piece that focuses much harder on the laughs.  And I mean MUCH harder.  It’s actually sort of disconcerting to watch an anime that’s essentially two different pieces at the same time–the first a fairly normal one with some laughs and scares, and the second one a wildly outlandish laugh-out-loud comedy with some scares, but at the same time it’s a spectacular value.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands Ghost Stories Volume 4 an eight out of ten for managing to be two movies in one, and an incredible value besides.

You’ve got to love this, folks–we thought Cash for Clunkers was bad, try the Chinese version: Moola For Movies.

If you’re over in China right now, and there’s a pretty good chance that if you actually ARE in China you’re not allowed by law to read this anyway, but if you’re in China right now, theatres are handing out nine hundred thousand passes  good for a discount to a “patriotic movie”.  These passes, however, are only good if you buy a ticket to a domestic movie first.

So buy a pass, get a discount to see another movie.  Frankly, I’ve seen some Chinese movies–Jet Li in the Once Upon A Time In China series is one of the better ones I’ve seen–and it’s really not that bad a prospect.  As deals go, this one’s really pretty sweet. Sound like a ripoff, you say?  Well, maybe…but I’ll tell you that the biggest film of 2009 in China stars Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Andy Lau…and it’s called The Great Cause of China’s Foundation.

That’s one of those “patriotic movies” they talked about.

It’s come to my attention that we don’t get a whole lot of anime review out here, folks, so it’s fallen to me to fix this lapse.  For those of you what don’t habla, “anime” is a general catch-all term for Japanese animation.  Often maligned and seldom understood, some really great stuff has come out of this catch-all.

And today, we’re talking Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, a three-volume romp, from the boys at ADV.

Basically, we’ve got two kids, Sasshi and Arumi, two fairly normal twelve year olds who live in Osaka.  Their folks, meanwhile, work in the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade, a kind of enclosed strip mall that’s seen better days.  And with Sasshi and Arumi’s folks all considering closing up and moving on, things have never looked quite so bleak.  At least until, in truest anime fashion, Sasshi and Arumi fall into a series of alternate dimensions where they get to act out various roles like space fighter pilots and detectives and whatnot.  While it starts out entertaining, the more pragmatic and probably more mature Arumi starts to long for home.  But will Sasshi follow along?  And even if he does, can they find a way home?

This, like a lot of anime I’ve seen, has sort of a weird way of starting out light, fun, and comical but quickly expanding into this dark morass of sorrow.  I understand a lot of it, in this case, comes from character development, but I tell you, I’ve seen the common theme in more anime than I care to recall.  Excel Saga, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun….all of them started out light-hearted and fun but RAPIDLY became total downers.  And Excel Saga was supposed to be a lunatic madhouse of comedy.  If it hadn’t been for the last episode, Going Too Far, it would’ve been one of the biggest letdowns ever.

And that’s exactly what happens with Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.  It’s great fun watching these kids romp around fantasy playgrounds.  But it falls apart in such random fashion that the original lighthearted glee is just plain lost.

And if a movie leaves you feeling BAD at the end, then what was the point of watching it?  You watch a movie for entertainment, not for suffering.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale rings up Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi with a whopping six out of ten for starting out great but not being able to keep up with its own opening.

Guillermo del Toro’s producer cred on the upcoming remake of The Orphanage isn’t just for show–he’s flexing some muscle on that set.  So much so, in point of fact, that he’s actually hand-picked the director.  Guess who’s handling the role?

Larry Fessenden.

That thrill you just felt running down your spine was the thrill of the likelihood that you will be watching a good movie when it finally comes out.  Larry Fessenden is a name to conjure with in the horror movie circles–a veteran horror director, writer and actor, even if primarily in the low budget field.

There’s lots of reason to be encouraged by this, even if we’re going to have a good long while to wait.  There’s not even specific word out on when the script will be ready.  But with del Toro clearly in a mood to run the show and Fessenden taking over on direction, we should have a beauty of a piece…when it finally shows up.

I’ve seen horror movies from a lot of different places, with a lot of different results.  I’ve seen Australian horror, Brazilian horror, Chilean horror, Russian horror, Scandinavian horror—the French are absolutely INSANE with their horror—but it’s not every day the Brits take a whack at the horror genre.  Sure, there’s the 28 (time periods) Later series, and we can’t forget Shaun of the Dead even if that’s a bit more comedy than horror, but when they came out with Mum And Dad, I knew I was in for a doozy.

Mum And Dad starts off simply, with a young Polish woman named Lena who’s emigrated to England after a falling out with her parents.  She meets a chatty young woman, Birdie, and her silent brother Alfie. One night, after missing her bus, she agrees to go home with the duo.  This is where her problems begin as Birdie and Alfie have led her into a suburban nightmare the likes of which are seldom seen, and Birdie and Alfie’s “mum” and “dad” have decided to take Lena as their own.  Lena, of course, isn’t taking this lying down.

Basically, if you want disturbing in your movies, then you need look no farther than this right here.  Because this is quite possibly the KING of disturbing movies—I mean, I thought I’d seen the limit with Japanese lunacy like Crazy Lips and Blind Beast Vs. Killer Dwarf, but I don’t think any of those could quite top the sheer squick factor of watching a fat man pleasuring himself into a chunk of random meat. The worst part is, that’ll happen.  You really don’t want to see such a thing, but there it is.  You don’t want to see MOST of what’s going on in Mum And Dad, but it’s there.  Mum will spend about five minutes carving random whatnot into Lena’s back.  Dad will very nearly rape Lena.  And then Lena will jam a screwdriver into his lung.  Trust me, what I’ve told you about there isn’t even a tenth part of the sheer lunacy and insanity that Mum And Dad will present to you.  You know when some movies promote themselves by saying that they’re “not for the squeamish”?  Well, this is one of them, except this time, they mean it.  If you’re in the least squeamish—if you’re not already pretty thoroughly desensitized—then you’re not going to get very far with this riot of bloodshed and mayhem.

That having been said, they actually did a fair job of preserving the suspense in this one.  Just because it’s jam-packed with bloodshed and mayhem doesn’t mean that this is all the movie has to offer.  No, I was surprised by the sheer watchability of this.  Yes, it was brutal and violent and downright nasty, but it was also suspenseful and a taut thriller.  It was high-tension stuff, make no mistake, and will require a forceful constitution to endure the sheer amount of ordure involved in this piece, but if you can, then you might be able to enjoy it.  Just don’t overestimate your tolerance—this sucker IS nasty.  Make no mistake on that point.  But underneath the nasty, if you can stand it, is a pretty solidly done movie.

I’m just a little put off by what’s standing between me and it.

Mum And Dad isn’t necessarily a bad movie, but it is strong.  It’s very easy to be TOO strong for most, and has probably priced itself out of the market in terms of content.  But if you think you can hack it, give it a try.  You might like it.

I love Kung Fu Hustle.  Geniunely, I love this movie.

Okay, yes–it was just yesterday that I brought up Kung Fu Panda, and I can assure you that I’m not on some crazy kung fu kick.  Not that kung fu movies aren’t often great fun–I tell you, this is the one subgenre of film where you can count on the Chinese to be amazing.  They have done some FANTASTIC stuff.

But Kung Fu Hustle was something special.

The plot is one significant part of it–a young man from the country and his tubby cohort are out to join the Axe Gang, the most feared criminal syndicate in all of China.  They want the standard things that young men looking to join criminal syndicates want, money and women.  While out trying to join, they stumble into Pig Sty Alley, a run-down housing development full of honest, hard-working folks just trying to make their way in the world. In a series of unusual events, Pig Sty Alley manages to catch the attention of the Axe Gang, and we discover the Alley’s secret–it’s positively lousy with kung fu masters.  The coolie (basically a guy who moves heavy stuff for a living) is a thunder-legged master by the name of Twelve Kicks.  The tailor is an effeminate punching master known as Iron Fist, who hangs his dry cleaning up by the iron rings that protect his wrists in battle.  And the guy at the noodle shop, Donut?  He’s a staff fighter called Hexagon Staff.

And for those of you who think I’ve given away half the plot, oh no. Oh no no nooooo…there’s plenty more where they came from.

Naturally, the Axe Gang takes offense to this apartment building standing up for itself and thus sends an array of hired killers to take care of business.

Perhaps the best part of Kung Fu Hustle is the way Stephen Chow has managed to blend an adrenaline-fuelled rush of a movie with a rollicking comic riot of a movie.  There will be entire stretches of the movie with precious little dialogue, but you’ll scarcely notice because you’re too busy watching incredibly choreographed fight scenes.  And then, when the dialogue DOES come back into play, it’s brisk, it’s punchy, and it packs in plenty of laughs. There’s a very good reason that this movie had the widest cinematic release in the United States of a foreign language film–because it was THAT GOOD.  I actually remember seeing this one in a theatre near my house, and I live out in the middle of nowhere, so we don’t always get the newest movies right off.  But on one cold Sunday afternoon in April, I managed to catch this one.  And it stuck with me for quite a while, seeing the amazing fight scenes on a big screen.

Yes, for those who want a SERIOUS kung fu epic, well, this is not for you.  In fact, I’m hard pressed to name very many SERIOUS kung fu epics–most of the ones I’ve seen have had at least a little humor in them. And yes, there’s a heavy dependence on the wire-fu going on in here.  But these things are so small that they can easily be overlooked.  The plain and the simple is, I loved Kung Fu Hustle, and if you’re into action flicks with some humor, or action flicks with a LOT of humor, then Kung Fu Hustle will definitely be up YOUR alley too.