The Transformers: the movie (1986)

The Transformers: the movie was an animated feature to help sell the toys... i mean tell the remarkable story of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons...

The film is notable for some of the actors who lent their voices to the characters, especially Orson Welles who voiced Unicron. Amazingly this was the great man's last role. Other stars who you can hear in this film are Leonard Nimoy, Casey Kasem and Eric Idle. Not many films can boast that kind of line-up!

The story itself is decent enough with nothing too innovative. The film flows well though your attention may wander after a while, what works as an half hour long TV episode does not necessarily translate into an hour and a half long movie. A problem with the film, i feel, is that it was too much like the TV series...

Visually however it is still a treat and the soundtrack... well if you like late 80s US heavy metal then you'll love it. Otherwise you may want to bring ear plugs. Personally i love it and own the OST too.

Overall its a decent enough animated film. Maybe it didn't work as a movie that well but it certainly was light years ahead of the endless CGI-fests that are the Transformers movie experiences today.

Quiet Fire (1991)

1991 action movie Quiet Fire stars Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as ...guess what? A Vietnam vet! Well that is a surprise...

Lawrence's ex-commanding officer is now running for the US senate and he thinks Lawrence has the dirty on him which could derail his blossoming political career.

Therefore he sends an army of assassins (including two female bodybuilders - no really) and bent cops (including Robert Z'dar) to kill him. Luckily everyone is pretty inept at killing our hero though there is plenty of collateral damage.

The film is hilarious, and very little of that intentional. The action comes thick and fast but is generally pretty shoddy though entertaining along with most of the acting. There is also plenty of unnecessary but gratuitous female nudity. Plus a heavy amount of cheese.

Therefore it has all the ingredients to make a great trash movie. And it is. I enjoy this kind of film a lot and particularly this one, Lawrence had the right amount of charm and goofiness to suit the nonsense going on around him.

Bluebottles (1928)

Bluebottles is a charming comedy short starring Elsa Lanchester, one of three stories written for her by H.G. Wells and with a small cameo from her future husband Charles Laughton.

In the film Elsa plays an innocent happy-go-lucky girl who gets drawn into a cops and robbers gun battle by accident and also by accident ends up the heroine. The film is often quite surreal and often in the vein of a comic strip, the robbers for example all have stripey jumpers - all they needed were bags over their shoulders with "Swag" written on them!

While everyone else in the film is drawn as a fairly conventional and one dimensional stereotype Elsa displays a whole range of expressions and emotions and the overall effect is quite amazing. A very enjoyable little film.

The Shootout (1992)

A movie in that very HK specific genre : slapstick comedy ultraviolence.

This time starring Aaron Kwok as a pretty boy / pretty useless young cop who gets caught up in a case involving violent armed robbers and thus gets assigned to Lau Ching Wan's team. Then he falls in love with a KTV singer (Fennie Yuen) but of course she turns out to be the criminal boss' (unenthusiastic) girl... et cetera.

That makes it easy to find the criminals of course, which is just as well as the cops don't really seem to do any police work. Their idea of investigating seems to be following a suspect into a brothel and then singing badly in a karoke lounge.

The final showdown takes place in a police training area, why and how the bad guys got there isn't explained but it makes for a good action setpiece to end the film. Jackie Chan produced and his hallmarks are here : fast, imaginative action.

It's not a film for plot but a film for big guns and bigger explosions. Sometimes thats just what you want.

Killing American Style (1990)

In many ways this is the prototype to the cult classic Samurai Cop with Amir Shervan directing the legendary Robert Z'dar in a slice of 80s action cheese.

Killing American Style isn't as good as Samurai Cop though, it has the latter's violence, gratuitous nudity and bizarre characters though lacks a bit of charm. Its still well worth a watching if this kind of trash is your thing. If you are like me basically...

The plot is ridiculous (of course). Z'dar leads a gang of bumbling hoodlums which includes the very strange Lynch who literally is a man who thinks with his penis. Luckily for Z'dar and company the cops are equally as useless.

Unluckily for Z'dar he tangles with a long haired hero (hmm that sounds like another film) who is also a kickboxer...

Mantrap (1926)

Clara Bow was one of the biggest box office draws in the 1920s. This was one of her many silent movies, a comedy set in the Canadian backwoods in a place called Mantrap.

The film can basically be summed up as: city girl is charmed by the country life and her backwoods husband, then get bored and is seduced back by to her city ways when a couple of NY guys (Percy Marmont and Ernest Torrence) arrive on vacation. Clara flirts with everyone and there is a bit of a menage a trois (all in a chaste 1920s fashion of course) but it all ends very well and everyone goes home happily for tea.

Clara was made for this film with her bubbly ways. The plot is a bit obvious but the film has plenty of charm.

Masterblaster (1987)

"What is this film about?" "Paintball gone wrong." "OK good - what did you just say?"

A paintball tournament (and this is for pros not people on a work away day messing about) is held in the USA starring a motley collection of character stereotypes. There is a decent cash prize for the winner. Only the problem is someone has switched their paint gun for real weapons and is starting to waste the competitors for real. Well someone is taking the tournament just that little bit too seriously...

Ex-Vietnam vet Jeff Moldovan looks to save the day and hunt the bad guy down. Although the film is rather poor in many ways it does have some reasonably good action scenes and the ending (and thus the unmasking of the bad guy) was decent in keeping you in suspense.