Tag Archives: Spy

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: OVERTURN: AWAKENING OF THE WARRIOR (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: Ivan Doan

FEATURING: Ivan Doan, Maria Glazunova, Konstantin Gerasimyuk, Eric R. Gilliatt, Bill Konstantinidis, Philippa Peter

PLOT: Christopher Gabriel emerges from a dream to find himself a pawn in an international game of geopolitical warfare, and attempts to uncover the meaning of his role and explore his newly discovered abilities.

Still from OVERTURN: AWAKENING OF THE WARRIOR (2013)

COMMENTS: “What do you mean?” It’s easily the most common line of dialogue in Overturn: Awakening of the Warrior. A character unleashes a complex metaphysical monologue with a raised eyebrow and a self-satisfied smile, smug in their superior  knowledge. Their conversational partner invariably responds with narrowed eyes and the tone of someone with a well-used BS detector, “What do you mean?”

It’s a crucial question for the film itself, which tries to fake importance by spouting a lot of dialogue that doesn’t “mean” anything at all. The barest scraps of a plot revolve around a young man’s discovery of a titanic battle between good and evil, but neither the scale of the conflict nor the stakes of the outcome are ever articulated. His interactions aren’t with characters so much as with signifiers with names like The Servant, The Judge, or The Informer: all portent, no content. Every other scene is one of those dialogues where characters say big words with great conviction, broken up with occasional martial arts demonstrations and—most oddly—vlog posts where Christopher alludes to all the crazy stuff going on. (Said crazy stuff is never detailed with any specificity.) What passes for tension is mostly bluster, and what passes for conflict is merely pronouncement.

At this point, I should note that, while researching this film, I discovered that it’s a continuation of a webseries called “Overturn” featuring several of the same actors and characters. Is it a direct sequel, or a re-imagining of the same premise, à la Adolescence of Utena? That’s not really clear, and while I could try speedrunning the series, I don’t think there’s much value in doing so, because the film is so lacking in anything concrete that it honestly doesn’t matter what the connection is. There’s nothing in the feature that would suddenly become more explicit with the background provided by a 3-minute episode. It’s just bigger.

The thing is, Overturn: Awakening… is actually a pretty good-looking film. Cinematographer Sergey Kachanov stages attractive vistas in and around the lively parks and gardens of Kyiv circa 2013. (Given current events, seeing the city in this way is bittersweet.) And the cast looks the part, from the pretty Glazunova to the ominously grizzled Gerasimyuk. Given that exactly one actor in the film can call English their first language, they deliver their word-salad speeches with reasonable skill overall. In particular, I strongly suspect Gerasimyuk is delivering all his English dialogue phonetically, but with no discernible decrease in menace. Doan, a strikingly handsome lead who sports the film’s best American accent and demonstrates decent martial arts skills, anchors the film. (It’s often obvious when punches are being pulled, and the faceless ninjas he fights do that thing where they gang up on Doan but then attack him one-by-one. Let’s give the fight scenes a B-.) Parts of Overturn et al pass themselves off quite effectively as a new addition to the spy canon.

Unfortunately, Doan the actor is significantly hamstrung by Doan the screenwriter, Doan the director, and Doan the editor. Aside from the frustrating lack of anything actually happening, Overturn: AOTW has absolutely no pacing whatsoever. Scenes slam into each other with no regard for logical development, intriguing ideas are quickly dropped and forgotten, and rhythms repeat without variation to the point of tedium. There are almost no scenes with more than two people, and an excessive number of them take place on park benches and riverwalks. What’s ultimately weirdest about the movie is that its perception of itself is so wildly different from what it actually presents. It thinks it’s a deep exploration of the psychology of self. It’s mainly people talking in circles.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…certainly takes the worlds of martial arts action and philosophical pondering to a different place… a straight-forward, thinking man’s amalgamation of philosophy, action, and science fiction rolled into an independent film effort that feels like a story only getting started.” – Kirk Fernwood, OneFilmFan

(This movie was nominated for review by Dick, who described it as “Bruce Lee meets Andrey Tarkovsky.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)       

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (2025)

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Reflet dans un diamant mort

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: ,

FEATURING: Yannick Renier, Céline Camara, ,  Koen De Bouw, Thi-Mai Nguyen,

PLOT: Retired superspy John D. finds his routine of drinking by the seaside interrupted when a lithe body washes ashore, triggering chaotic flashbacks to his days as a secret agent.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Cattet & Forzani whirl their inspirations in a blender while pushing a cornucopia of sub-genres up to and past the breaking point — including the popular kink, “CMNKWF”. (That’s “Clothed Male, Naked Katana-Wielding Female,” for those not in the loop.)

COMMENTS: There are two early giveaways that Reflection is going to be an oddity of excess. One is the long list of production companies. This is not uncommon for smaller-budget European films, but Cattet’s and Forzani’s film goes a bit beyond that, suggesting the filmmakers needed to scrape around to find brave investors. The second, foreshadowing the coming bombast, also appears in the credits: a blast of hyper-Bondian murder blasts and stabbings, with diamonds erupting from the colorful silhouettes of the victims, before a pleasure boat sinks down behind a growing blood-water column of text. And, as this is a European spy movie, there’s also the early topless scene, wherein a young woman exposes her breasts while tanning in a hotel’s private beach—exposing the diamond piercings that set off our film’s hero’s chain of memories.

And what a hero! Old John D. has the weathered good lucks of an erstwhile man of action, and young John D. has all the panache, pluck, and pizzazz that might reasonably (indeed, perhaps unreasonably) distilled into one superspy. The developments are a little hard to follow at the start, with intercuts of Old and Young John’s adventures. By the third act, we’re facing a massive explosion of double-dealings, glorious gadgetry, and face after face torn and otherwise peeled from John’s ultimate adversary, the manifestly deadly femme known only as “Serpentika”.

Cattet and Forzani exist somewhere above the speed of Ritchie and the grisliness of Tarantino, all while flirting with—and, on occasion, ravishing—the ambiguous meta-cinematic maneuvers of Fellini. With little room to breathe between outlandish capering (at least Old John’s timeline travels at a somewhat staid pace), the combined effect of the various shady machinations is to leave the viewer benumbed with bloody scintillation. Clawing together coherent memories of the chain of events, I can only roughly recall that one of Young John’s charges, an oil mega-baron, was murdered—but not before he kills John’s true love, a dashing young Black woman clad in a high-tech mirror dress, segments of which she leaves behind to allow John to follow her.

Or does the evil oil baron murder her? The narrator’s recollections are as murky as his cocktails. But there are roulette wheel orgasms, pentuplicate ninjas, art-and-murder by oil slick, and an unbelievable parade of increasingly dangerous (and art-house-styled) rogues standing between John and his vengeance. After you watch Reflection in a Dead Diamond, you will clamor for these Belgians to craft the next Bond movie. I’m sure the suits in charge of the franchise will gladly sacrifice the 100% clarity for the 100% boost in oomph and style.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“John’s drifting memories are a dizzying kaleidoscope of surreal free associations, lifted from the clichés and conventions – the cartoonish credits, the casino games, the clandestine meetings, the global players, the masked assassins, the absurd gadgets, the sadomasochistic sex and the kickass fights – not so much of a Bond movie (although Testi does resemble an older Sean Connery), as of the endless European ripoffs that appeared in the wake of Bond… a deep dive into the genre’s established imagery and grammar that goes beyond mere postmodern pastiche into something more artful and abstract, even quintessential, and all sexed up with the filmmakers’ characteristic kink.” — Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010)

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The second highest-grossing motion picture of all time—the product of a little indie shingle that hit the jackpot, called Avengers: Endgame—is also by fiat the highest-grossing motion picture of all time with the word “endgame” in the title. That’s not as easy a title to grab as you might think; IMDb lists several dozen features, shorts, and TV episodes that have relied upon the handy term for the final moves of a chess match, most of which preceded Marvel’s grand finale. So it’s probably the law of averages that put two different Endgames on our reader-suggested review queue within spitting distance of each other. Aside from their titles, these two films share exactly two common elements: they both use hurtful language with reckless abandon, and they are both shot on film. Beyond that, you couldn’t ask for two similarly titled stories to be further apart in style, tone, and subject matter. What makes them both worthy to bear the standard of games that end? Let’s dig in.

ENDGAME (2000)

DIRECTED BY: Conor McPherson

FEATURING: , , Charles Simon, Jean Anderson

PLOT: In a barren house at the end of the world, a blind and decrepit old man lives with his parents (who occupy a pair of rubbish bins) and his hobbled servant, who is contemplating a departure.

COMMENTS: Let’s give a warm welcome back to Samuel Beckett, previously seen round these parts waiting for a friend. Another entry from Irish television’s epic “Beckett on Film” cycle capturing all the great writer’s stage works on celluloid for posterity, Endgame is here to deliver the author’s vision of a bleak and doomed future for the human race, precisely according to the author’s wishes. The set is an almost-empty room, devoid of any decoration or furnishing that isn’t occupied by an actor for the duration. Beckett was notoriously allergic to anything ornamental (as with Godot, he originally wrote Endgame in French to curb any tendencies toward florid vocabulary), so what we see and hear is not just what matters but all that matters.

What we can see is definitely a surreal nightmare. All four characters are stricken with various invalidities. Hamm, the apparent lord of the manor, doesn’t enter so much as he is unveiled, and when he speaks it is to declare himself the center of the universe. “Can there be misery loftier than mine?” He is immobile, and thus relies upon the assistance of a crippled man who is himself unable to sit down. The apocalypse has obliterated everything outside of this room. (“Nothing on the horizon?” Hamm asks. “What in God’s name could there be on the horizon?” Clov replies.) And then there are the upstage trash cans that Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ENDGAME (2000) / OPERATION: ENDGAME (2010) →

Apocryphally Weird

40*. MODUS OPERANDI (2009)

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“The more beautiful, free-spirited women you can get into a low-budget film, the easier it is for the audience to forgive your script.”–Frankie Latina

DIRECTED BY: Frankie Latina

FEATURING: Randy Russell, Danny Trejo, Mark Borchardt, Barry Poltermann, Nikki Johnson, Michael Sottile

PLOT: CIA agent Stanley Cashay—the best in the business—is dragged out of retirement to recover a pair of stolen briefcases in exchange for the name of the operative who murdered his wife. A network of spies around the world assist him in his quest, while the cases repeatedly change hands in a bloodthirsty quest. When he discovers that they contain videos of sadistic ritual murders, Cashay is spurred to action.

Still from Modus Operandi (2009)

BACKGROUND:

    • Latina has described the movie as his attempt to make his own version of his favorite movie, Apocalypse Now.
    • The film is credited as being “presented by” adult film star Sasha Grey. Lending her name appears to be the extent of her involvement in the film.
    • Danny Trejo filmed all his scenes in a single eight-hour stint before he had to catch a plane back to Los Angeles. These were the only scenes in the movie that Latina shot with on-set sound.
    • Latina accomplished the Tokyo scenes by using the proceeds from his job at a casino to send actress Johnson and a cameraman to Japan to capture the footage.
    • Most of the film was shot in Latina’s hometown of Milwaukee, and he takes advantage of some of the region’s architectural wonders to serve as the backdrop for his globetrotting hero. Among the locations featured in the opening credits are the dramatic angles of Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum, the Domes of the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, and the Infinity Room at the notorious House on the Rock.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It feels like half of Modus Operandi consists of people sitting around receiving phone calls. They’re just minding their own business, drinking cocktails or hanging out in a hot tub or drinking cocktails while hanging out in a hot tub, and then a phone call comes. This tic reaches its apotheosis when a man takes such a call while he is grooming himself and while his female companion is casually shaving her pubic region. She’s totally nude, her crotch is completely covered in shaving cream, and she’s right up in the guy’s face with it. It’s the most perfect example of this film’s unique blend of overt sex with zero sexiness.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Casey Thunderbird requests the pleasure of Black Licorice’s participation in a spy venture; you got your porn audition tapes in my spy movie

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Modus Operandi feels like the movie you would get if aliens were asked to make a James Bond movie and did all their research by asking a drunk at a bar. With its intense focus on crowd-pleasing violence and nudity (of both the male and female varieties), it’s the cinematic equivalent of all dessert/no veggies, except the desserts were created on Nailed It! The infectious joy of making the movie is paired with an extraordinarily high level of amateurism, making for a movie that knows it’s ridiculous and yet somehow manages to become even more ridiculous in the process.


Original trailer for Modus Operandi

COMMENTS: Frankie Latina sets the tone before a moment of Continue reading 40*. MODUS OPERANDI (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR (1967)

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L’inconnu de Shandigor

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DIRECTED BY: Jean-Louis Roy

FEATURING: Daniel Emilfork, Marie-France Boyer, Marcel Imhoff,

PLOT: After Swiss scientist Herbert Von Krantz develops a method for nullifying nuclear explosions, various world powers plot to steal his secret.

Still from The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967)

COMMENTS: I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that this film is quite an oddity. It features Daniel Emilfork, the eccentric performer who portrayed the memorable villain Krank in The City of Lost Children, and perhaps the strangest character actor to come from France. The film looks like Godard‘s take on film noir channeled through a smirking Cold War nihilism. There’s death by “carbonic foam from Siberia”, which unfolds in a boogie-woogie-blasted rave-cave. Russian and American agents feud in the natural history section of a grand museum replete with stone busts and huge prehistoric skeletons. And the movie features one of the oddest ’60s set-pieces I’ve ever seen: a gang of shorn-headed goons prepare the corpse of their chief spy while their boss croons “Bye-bye, Mr. Spy” over a cabaret-ragtime tune he plays on a pipe organ in the embalming room.

The bad news is the narrative is ill-executed, making The Unknown Man of Shandigor a heaving stew of intermingling lumps that, on inspection, feels empty. Herbert von Krantz (the unceasingly overblown Daniel Emilfork) has invented a method of negating the effects of nuclear explosions, haughtily declaring that future wars will now unfold “however I want them to.” As so often occurs when a genius tilts the balance of power, greater forces come out of the woodwork to “rectify” things. Enter four different spy troupes, each introduced by an incongruous subtitle. The Russians want professor von Krantz’s “Canceler” device as a gift for the proletariat: what better way to reward the working masses than with the gift of military dominance? They have set up shop in a chateau teaming with gilt and mirrors, and focus their efforts on abducting the professor’s albino assistant. The Americans, led by ex-Wehrmacht scientist “Bobby Gun”, hang out in a nearby bowling alley while they undertake a similar plot to steal the formula.

The other two agencies are beefier in their weirdness: a shadowy outfit of bald-headed, spectacle-wearing operatives led by the aforementioned organist; and coming out of left field (or, more precisely, East Asian field) in the final act, the “Black Sun Orient,” who seem to be commanded by some manner of artificial intelligence. This all sounds very exciting on paper, and while the strangeness is served up by ladleful, the effect somehow is no more than occasional wide-eyed smiling to interrupt a coursing streak of tedium. I should not have felt bored much of the time, but this film felt half again as long as it actually was. The inconsistency of tone—messianically grand at times, slinking at others; unnervingly bizarre for stretches, ho-hum-drum elsewise—prevents this from attaining either standard greatness or so-bad-it’s-greatness. Though The Unknown Man of Shandigor largely fails as a movie, it is still worth a look for its succulent morsels of peculiarity. Just bear in mind there’s a lot of bitter broth in the bowl.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A wild mix of Euro-spy trappings, French New Wave-styled visual flourishes and quirky, black comedy… The Unknown Man Of Shandigor is really a bit of a pop art masterpiece.” -Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop!