He uses soft style in a hard way.

Man of Tai Chi

(2013)

Keanu doesn’t know Tai Chi. At least, his villainous alter ego in Man of Tai Chi doesn’t. Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut is a star vehicle for fight choreographer and diminutive chum Tiger Chen (with whom he worked on The Matrix trilogy). Chen, who bears a passing resemblance to John Cazale, more than holds his own as a leading man, in a rudimentary but effective narrative that finds him overcome with yin and battling to regain his yang. This, naturally, involves a lot of fighting.

This premise is recognisable anywhere, any time; Tiger (Luke) is trained by a master (Ben Kenobi/Yoda) but is tempted by the dark (Yin) side that is Donaka (Reeves; Darth Vader/the Emperor). His master is even called Master Yang (Hai Yu); it’s up there for all to see in orange highlighter. It’s no secret that Lucas’ films consciously blended Eastern and western religion and mysticism in order to tap into universal themes.

Here, right from the start, Master Yang is worried about the disruptive forces within Tiger (“You are not controlling your Chi. Your Chi is controlling you”). Tiger is attracted to power, to prove that Tai Chi is effective for fighting (and so to disprove the pronouncement of his opponent in a local competition; “Tai Chi is just for show. You’ve already lost”). In so doing, Tiger attracts the attention of Reeves’ super-rich Donaka, owner of a private security firm. He runs an illegal fight club in which the contestants may end up dead, one that is under investigation by police officer Sun-Jing Shi (Karen Mok).

Of course, it’s necessary to provide Tiger with motivation to sign up (fighting for money is not honourable, so he requires the lure of a threat to his master’s temple). When he does, a series of escalating encounters ensue. Reeves the director, aided by Woo–ping Yen designing the action, has learnt well. He ensures the fights are brutal and vital, complemented by a driving soundtrack that adds a touch of the oriental to Matrix style beats. Michael G Cooney’s script embraces the archetypes and furnishes a few modern touches; Tiger’s life becomes a Truman Show, filmed at every stage to a paying audience; when it is played back for his edification/horror, it feels like a strange mash up of Peter Weir’s film with The Parallax View test reel.

There wouldn’t be any movie if Tiger accepted his master’s wisdom at the outset, so evidently it’s much more fun to pursue the yang path in filmic terms. This is coloured, however, by having rigid, succinct Donaka (Reeves playing to the minimalist, an effective choice) root for Tiger to become all he can be. Donaka’s methods are merely an inversion of his own master’s teaching, and ultimately there is a blurring of the lines of attainment. Tiger rejects Donaka’s path, refusing to kill for him. But Donaka has his way in the end, when he confronts Tiger and the latter calls upon Yang’s technique of palm striking his opponent. So Tiger delivers Donaka the life he is owed, while Tiger, in so doing, acts with the control Master Yang saw as essential to development.

While the Tiger fights are consistently engaging, Reeves is responsible for the occasional misstep. The Raid’s Iko Uwais is wasted in a cameo as one of Tiger’s opponents, while Reeves is stiff and unconvincing of pose during the climactic confrontation. His appropriation of martial arts worked when conveyed within the stylistic trappings of the Wachowskis’ Matrix universe, but, paired with Tiger, he’s more akin to a lumbering giant. Additionally, the investigation subplot never justifies its inclusion.

Reeves is willing to indulge supernatural elements (the palm strike, the beast like snarl Donaka emits when roused), but he stops short of fully embracing elemental forces. As such, there’s a wee bit of a hodgepodge going on, the director and writer straddling stools at any given moment. Still, this is a decent and modest spectacle, and hopefully Reeves will get back in the director’s seat again soon.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
(SPOILERS) Another week, another undercooked Netflix flick from an undeniably talented director. What’s up with their quality control? Do they have any? Are they so set on attracting an embarrassment of creatives, they give them carte blanche, to hell with whether the results are any good or not? Apostle's an ungainly folk-horror mashup of The Wicker Man (most obviously, but without the remotest trace of that screenplay's finesse) and any cult-centric Brit horror movie you’d care to think of (including Ben Wheatley's, himself an exponent of similar influences-on-sleeve filmmaking with Kill List), taking in tropes from Hammer, torture porn, and pagan lore but revealing nothing much that's different or original beyond them.

You can’t just outsource your entire life.

Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

Well, you did take advantage of a drunken sailor.

Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose.

Phantom Thread (2017)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams.

Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

This is it. This is the moment of my death.

Fearless (1993)
Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a rubgy team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in glowing terms, and rightly so.

Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

Outstanding. Now, let’s bite off all the heads and pile them up in the corner.

Venom (2018)
(SPOILERS) A 29% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes can't be wrong, can it? To go by the number of one-star reviews Sony’s attempt to kick-start their own shred of the Marvel-verse has received, you’d think it was the new Battlefield Earth, or Highlander II: The Quickening. Fortunately, it's far from that level of ignominy. And while it’s also a considerable distance from showing the polish and assuredness of the official Disney movies, it nevertheless manages to establish its own crudely winning sense of identity.

The whole thing should just be your fucking nose!

A Star is Born (2018)
(SPOILERS) A shoe-in for Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps not, since it will have to beat at very least Roma and First Man to claim the prize, but this latest version of A Star is Born still comes laden with more acclaim than the previous three versions put together (and that's with a Best Picture nod for the 1937 original). While the film doesn't quite reach the consistent heights suggested by the majority of critics, who have evacuated their adjectival bowels lavishing it with superlatives, it's undoubtedly a remarkably well-made, stunningly acted piece, and perhaps even more notably, only rarely feels like its succumbing to just how familiar this tale of rise to, and parallel fall from, stardom has become.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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