sufi-mohamed-1 Reviews

The Lady Assassin (2013)

The Lady Assassin is a feisty action adventure that makes the most of cutting edge technology, stunning locations and beautiful girls.

[8/10 · 24 March 2014]

Vietnamese films aren't exactly easy to come by on our shores, especially martial arts movies filmed in 3D. The Lady Assassin is a feisty action adventure that makes the most of cutting edge technology, stunning locations and beautiful girls. Make no mistake about it, the female cast members of The Lady Assassin are absolutely stunning. So much so, it's easy to forgive the films textbook plotting and overambitious set pieces.

Deadly women with dark secrets, evil outlaws, corrupt officials and group bathing sessions are the order of the day here. Nothing too gratuitous, that might upset the Vietnamese sensors, but there's more than enough titillation for those of us growing tired of wire-assisted wonderment. The Lady Assassin is one of the biggest box office hits in Vietnamese history, and as long as you keep your expectations down to a minimum, there's plenty for western audiences to get a grips of too.

Set in and around a traveller's tavern, The Lady Assassin tells the tale of a beautiful seductress and her team of lethal waitresses, who routinely slaughter the corrupt (and not so corrupt) government officials and businessmen who come their way. Before honing their skills in a game of volleyball and washing each other down in a pool overlooking the sea. I may have mentioned that part already.

Read more here: http://alturl.com/ga7pf

Dark Tourist (2012)

An Insatiable Modern Film Noir

[10/10 · 5 September 2013]

Grief tourism is an excursion to locations associated with tragedy. Travelers visit sites associated with death and murder. Dark Tourist, directed by Suri Krishnamma, exquisitely examines this fascination with pain in a manner that allows the audience to delve into the mind of a man who uses trauma to connect with others. This film encourages its audience to understand how feelings of loneliness and isolation devour victims who are unable to reach out to people around them.

Michael Cudlitz (Southland, Running Scared) plays Jim Tahna, a security guard whose eagerness for grief tourism goes beyond that of mere fascination with death and destruction. Jim takes a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana to visit sites associated with mass murderer, Carl Marznap, a quietly chilling Pruitt Taylor Vince (Wild at Heart, Constantine). In between locating the places where Carl grew up and slaughtered innocents, Jim meets Betsy, a heartbreakingly stoic Melanie Griffith (Lolita, Working Girl).

Cudlitz has a magnetism about him. He is able to maintain momentum between lucid expectation and crushing vulnerability with mere gestures, his limping step, and an emotive intelligence behind his eyes. Cudlitz plays Jim as a man of many layers whose desperate need to fill the unexplainable void within renders him incapable of sincerity. Jim knows exactly what to say to people and how to say it.

Krishnamma's use of sound allows his audience to make the connection between Jim's insatiable need to bond with others while simultaneously preserving his isolation. The lighting is at times beautiful and accentuates the grotesque themes of the film. Trauma, sexual desire, brutal deaths, and painful memories are highlighted under Krishnamma's artful direction.

The most intimate moments are surprisingly found during the Jim's voice overs, where we watch him go about his day. Paired with rhythmic, repetitive, and chaotic sounds, Jim is carried through the story methodically. This adds to the mounting tension that builds throughout the film as the reasons for Jim's fascination with pain are revealed.

In Dark Tourist, Krishnamma deals with the notion of an audience's fascination with death and sexuality as a form of entertainment. It is as if he is prodding the audience to look inward and discover their own reasons for feeling such satisfaction. The concept of one being a bottomless void, a face, a name, a victim, plays heavily in this orchestrated piece that no provides no simplistic answers to the logic behind a serial killer's motive. Nothing is black and white.

Dark Tourist is a film that calls to mind the thought of what it means to be a victim of a tragic event. It daringly and disturbingly draws the audience to the social dilemma victims of violent and sexual trauma face amongst peers, which is the fear of communication and the tendency to turn a blind eye. Cudlitz's portrayal of Jim during scenes where he is psychologically afflicted is masterful. In one scene Jim and Carl stand outside a prostitute's door. Jim is silent, still, almost trembling with the effort to hold himself against temptation. Here is the moment where change is imminent. Vince's quiet tones and Cudlitz's pregnant pause embodies the issue of trauma buried deeply into the psyche, and the struggle to keep the despair of its existence at bay.

Read the rest here - http://bit.ly/18wwPag

World War Z (2013)

Lacked originality, needs more perspective!

[5/10 · 21 July 2013]

The movie was originally adapted from Max Brooks's World War Z book, of which the film takes the similar title. Brooks had written WWZ with extreme clarity and precision and a strong, serious tone. It was appealing to read the book, it was much more interesting than the title suggests. The story-line was based on a typical heroic archetype structure, very linear and, in a way, unoriginal. I find myself strongly siding with Henry Barnes, because it's been a long-standing problem in the Zombie genre to take the performance so seriously. Brad Pitt seems largely invisible and untouchable–despite the apocalypse, nothing happens to him that we see. http://www.indiejudge.com/reviews/world-war-2013-movie-review/

The Employer (2013)

A Wicked Tale of Business Hiring Practises

[10/10 · 1 July 2013]

Merle does an excellent job of synthesizing both drama and suspense to create one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a very long time. We're lead to believe that its characters don't meet by chance, there's a real reason behind the sinister plot that encourages a vicious, dramatic performance.

We're lulled in slowly, as we discover the real reason the characters are there, what they were doing the night before, and the lengths they would go to acquire their position in the company. A lot of movies out there try to deal with the concept of Darwinism and natural selection, surely, but what happens when the business world adopts that mentality? Hasn't it already adopted that worldview? Success and profit mean everything, by whatever means necessary.

The Employer is a fascinating story of human psychology, ethics and the latent animalism that lurks within us all. Seemingly ordinary people whose one goal right now is to become millionaires are put side-by-side to uncover one of the most startling revelations--if that were me, I'd have done what they did. We watch as a spectators, but we're really watching ourselves--this is exactly what we would do if we were forced in these circumstances.

What're you waiting for? If you think Tom Cruise's Collateral had the natural selection argument, wait till you see The Employer.

Let's get hired!