South American soap operas, Rocky, Kill Bill, Martial Arts, Spaghetti Westerns? If you like this combo, then you’ll like Chile’s KILTRO. This was not only my first Chilean martial-arts film I’ve ever seen, but it was also my first Chilean movie that I’ve seen. After reading many praising reviews of this film, I kept my expectations in check and expected the film to be decent – and it is. KILTRO isn’t an amazing or original film, but the film is worth watching. If this was an American film, I would probably just rent it. But this is a “Chilean Martial-arts flick!” So, it’s worth buying the DVD just on that alone. The direction and acting are pretty top-notch for this type of genre. The main actor, Marko Zaror, is an okay actor, certainly not as charismatic as his movie body double – The Rock. Marko reminds me of a cross between Sly Stallone and an ogre. It’s amazing how fast he can move. He has some fight scenes in the film (about three to four exciting ones), but they are very nicely choreographed and not cut too quickly. During fight scenes, there’s some CGI blood splattered all over the place, which could be annoying to some. Since the story is good – Marko stalking/awkwardly trying to get the main actress to fall in love with him (she looks like Jessica Alba) and also the soap opera love triangle involving a woman involved with two different martial arts school masters – the movie moves along at a swift pace. The soundtrack is pretty interesting too – it rotates between cheesy 1980s love songs to good Ennio Morricone-type spaghetti western music. And the cinematography is great too, with some nice shots of Chile – looks like an exciting place to visit.
The Region 1 NTSC DVD, produced by Magnet, is not bad considering how long people have waited for an English-subtitled DVD. The anamorphic video ranges from eye-popping to looking like ass. Sunny day scenes look razor-sharp, while some indoor/dark scenes look like a tiny step up from a VHS tape – very grainy and blurry. Furthermore, the video quality looks like it’s shot on HD, while other times, it looks like it’s shot with a home video camera from the 1980s. The audio, on the other hand, is pretty decent sounding – DD 5.1/2.0 Spanish or English, with optional English subtitles. The extras include two pointless deleted scenes, funny bloopers (but not too many), a 7-minute behind the scenes, and the most interesting – storyboards and fight training. Marko Zaror certainly pushes himself to be the best athlete. He’s so bulky, but he moves very fast.
KILTRO is worth seeing, especially for its Chilean flavor. One of these days, I want to do a movie marathon of countries which just made their first martial-arts film, such as: The Challenge (Germany), Divine Intervention (Palestine, well there is one cool ninja scene in the flick), Jade Warrior (Finland), Anniyan (India), and Tongan Ninja (New Zealand).
Since the majority of Bollywood movies suck due to repetitiveness, lack of originality, amateur production, cheesy dialogue, overacting, adolescent representation of male & female relationships, I was happy to see KRRISH, the second superhero movie made in India (the first Indian superhero movie was called MR. INDIA made in 1987).
KRRISH is pretty satisfying and did live up to its hype when it was released in 2006. From 2006 until now, Indian special effects and action choreography has slightly improved so KRRISH feels a bit dated watching it now. If you’ve seen your fair share of Bollywood flicks, this movie is not only a good superhero movie, but for Bollywood standards, it was a huge step up in the technical production, CGI, special effects, and fight choreography. KRRISH raised the standards for other Bollywood action films. Although Bollywood action movie standards will most likely not change as much as THE MATRIX caused a huge change for Hollywood action film standards, there is no reason for other Bollywood action movie filmmakers to keep on releasing half-assed movie productions with straight-to-video quality.
KRRISH is a sequel to 2003’s Bollywood E.T.-influenced sci-fi movie called KOI MIL GAYA. I was happy to see that KOI MIL GAYA was Bollywood’s stab at sci-fi, which is much appreciated, but that movie was simply awful. It got a lot of respect and good reviews, but it’s a painful movie to watch, unless you think a mentally retarded dude meeting an alien is entertainment. Even when the mentally retarded dude gets powers from the alien and stops acting retarded, he still seems retarded. In KRRISH, that mentally retarded person is the father to the main hero in KRRISH. That father-son connection is the only thing that connects these two movies. At first, I thought it’s a cheap way of connecting the two movies so that the director can make some trilogy out of these movies, but after watching KRRISH, the unrelatedness does make some wacky sense, so now I would be curious to watch KOI MIL GAYA again, but I sold it used for $4 to a DVD store and I ain’t buying that movie again, even if these movies, along with a definite KRISSH 2, will become a trilogy.
KRISSH is a very solid superhero movie. Since Bollywood is usually a decade behind, I was expecting a 1990s style superhero movie – Batman Forever, The Crow, The Punisher, The Shadow. But surprisingly, KRISSH follows in the same successful pattern as in current superhero trends – origin/back story and more drama than action. The first half of KRISSH is all character development and origin story of the superhero named Krissh (his alter ego first name is Krishna). This superhero character has as much or even more development than in Spiderman, Hulk or Batman Begins. The tone throughout the movie is a mixture of drama and very funny humor (I hate Bollywood comedy, but this movie has universal humor), unlike the dry Superman Returns. KRRISH is ten times more entertaining than Superman Returns by the way. Both movies have the drama factor and maybe twenty minutes worth of action, but KRRISH is just so much more entertaining. The action, choreographed by the great Tony Ching Siu Tung of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, HERO, SHAOLIN SOCCER fame, is pretty tame in this movie, but for a Bollywood movie or even a non-Hong Kong film, the action is still entertaining. The superhero, Krissh, is mainly a fast runner and big leaper, so the wire work is mainly the focus. Hrithik Roshan, starring as Krissh, did an amazing job with the action choreography and wirework – very graceful and not awkward. He trained like mad for this role and it shows. The action is a little bit more than in Superman Returns, but at least in KRISSH, most of the action scenes are memorable, because they are all creatively done even if they have been influenced or knocked-off of other Hollywood movies (Spiderman, Tarzan, Zorro, The Incredibles, Paycheck, The Matrix). Although there is more melodrama than action, the CGI/special effects are still used all throughout the movie in positive subtle ways, and not in a negative in-your-face George Lucas way.
For a superhero movie, it’s even a bit touching. You will really enjoy this movie if the following things don’t bug you:
1. The wind machine is always used in the presence of the superhero and the lead female.
2. Hrithik Roshan has a thumb that breaks off into two mini claw thumbs, which is very distracting to me, but I still think he’s one of Bollywood’s best screen presence. Since he is a superhero, they should have some super beam of light that shoots out his double claw thumb – sort of like a Green Thumb Lantern, instead of a ring.
3. Slow motion action – I personally love it, especially in superhero movies. It just works better. When you have characters dressed in costumes moving at real-time, it just looks silly.
4. I love songs in Bollywood movies, but the songs are just forgettable in this movie – nothing special and the movie would have been better (and a bit shorter) without the three to four songs in this flick.
The NTSC ALL REGION 2-disk DVD is a pretty sweet package. KRISSH is produced by a DVD company called ADLABS, a company known to make top-quality DVDs. The movie is on one disk and the plentiful extras are on the other. The anamorphic video is of excellent quality, especially for a Bollywood DVD – the colors are very vivid and three-dimensional, flattering the film’s excellent cinematography. The DD 5.1 Hindi and DD 2.0 Hindi are very nice as well. Your surrounds and subwoofer get a workout since this is a superhero action movie. There are tons of subtitles options on this DVD – you get English, Arabic, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayan. Strangely, the Germans are left out. That’s weird because Germans love Bollywood. The English subtitles are good enough, with grammar mistakes here and there. There are some really good extras – although not subtitled, the main actors interviewed are all speaking English. There are about four 20-minute “making-of-the-film” clips. The best one is the training that Hrithik Roshan went through. It looked like the same heavy training as the actors in The Matrix went through. During Hrithik Roshan’s training, he wraps up his double claw thumb. I’m curious to why he does that. Is it painful or does it get in the way? There are also a bunch of trailers of bad Bollywood films and there is some “save-the-people” clip about some current genocide in India that the media never talks about. Overall, an excellent DVD package with really nice packaging as well. There is also a blu-ray version available, but I hear it’s a DNR mess, so I’m going to stick with my DVD.
If you like good superhero movies or if you are disappointed with most Bollywood movies, then I totally recommend KRRISH. I hope there will be sequels for this Indian superhero. If the director and producers were smart, they should also market this character into comic books, toys, etc. They should not only financially take advantage of creating a good Bollywood movie, but they should create a whole Indian pop culture out of the character. At least check out the movie for the India’s Monica Bellucci actress – Priyanka Chopra – winner of the Miss India and Miss World beauty pageants in 2000.
If you like ONG BAK, B13 DISTRICT, and old Shaw Brothers films, you should be pretty entertained by Germany’s first martial arts film – KAMPFANSAGE (The Last Apprentice). The look and feel of the movie felt like a cross between EQUILIBRIUM and AVALON. For a fantasy/martial arts genre pic, this movie was very good!
The story follows the pattern of a Shaw Bros film, but with a futuristic apocalyptic setting – bad guys kill all the martial arts masters in the country and steal a book about martial arts. They think they kill all the masters and supposedly kill an apprentice Jonas, played by German real-life martial arts expert Mathis Landwehr. Jonas survives his supposed death and plans to avenge his master’s death and get the book back by fighting the bad guys and recruiting and training a bunch of other good guys. In this futuristic apocalyptic time, there are no guns left, so everyone is fighting martial-arts style with fists, sticks, clubs and knives. The villains are an evil incestuous brother and sister duo. The hot femme fatale sister is the only one who has one of the last remaining guns in society. And the brother is a really good martial arts expert. The evil brother uses the martial arts book to train his evil goons. The whole movie is non-stop action with a nice simple non-convoluted story with very likable characters.
KAMPFANSAGE looks like an extremely professionally-made movie on a low budget. I read that the movie was filmed with a type of home video digital camera. Whatever they did, it looks more than cinematic. The look and cinematography are really beautiful. After watching the extras, it turns out that there was tons of CGI in the movie, but I didn’t even notice it. A lot of CGI was used for the backgrounds and even CGI characters. But when watching the movie, it’s barely noticeable. And when the CGI is noticeable, it’s used in beneficial aesthetic way to enhance the visuals of the film.
The action in this movie is pretty much non-stop. Even though the director films most of his action/martial arts scenes quick cut, it still looks pretty good. The best scene in the movie is a stick fight scene and hand-to-hand combat scene with Jonas and his German (Turkish possibly) sidekick, which actually doesn’t have a lot of quick cuts. It really shows the true talent of Mathis Landwehr. Even with the quick cuts, it is obvious Mathis Landwehr is truly a talented martial arts expert and not a Jean-Claude Van Damme.
KAMPFANSAGE is a totally re-watchable movie – awesome action, good acting, and even some hot-looking German girls. I thought the movie was going to be laughable-entertaining due to the idea of a “German martial arts movie.” But in fact, it’s just a very good genre film, regardless of what country it’s from – the European vibe of the film even makes the film better . Mathis Landwehr has a very good presence and I look forward to see his other German action movies, which will hopefully all have English subtitles on DVD. I hate to say it, but Mathis Landwehr looks a little like James Vanderbeek, but of course is more talented than Vanderbeek.
The 2-DISK German PAL DVD of KAMPFANSAGE is pretty much perfect. The DVD is an ultimate version, and I don’t think there will be any more releases of this DVD anywhere in the world. I’m surprised that there aren’t even DVD bootlegs of this film because this is the type of martial arts movie that would be in the martial arts bootleg section of legitimate DVD stores. The anamorphic video quality is excellent. There is nothing wrong with the way the film looks on this DVD. The DD 5.1 German audio is very good too, but not as excellent as the video quality. Sometimes some of the martial arts scenes sound muffled and other times inconsistent. But it’s a low-budget film and the audio still pretty much rocks with the surround sounds. The movie has an excellent trip-hop, hip-hop German soundtrack that even makes the action scenes more intense. The English subtitles are very good. I think I saw only one grammar mistake.
The extras are really plentiful – tons of trailers, deleted scenes, 3 audio commentaries (good if you know German), tons of making-of featurettes, Visual Effects featurette fan art, casting clips, easter eggs and so on. Surprisingly, some of the making-of featurettes have English subtitles while others do not.
There is also an NTSC Region 1 DVD version under the name The Challenge. I have no idea about the quality of that DVD version.
KAMPFANSAGE is pretty much an unknown gem of an action/martial arts film. Definitely check it out if you like such films!
Kerala Varma Pazhassiraja aka India’s Braveheart starring fat, hairy dudes!
I can understand the importance of this film for Malayalam cinema. I guess that part of India is not known for their films. So from that perspective, this is a good film for them. But…
But for the rest of the world, this is a very amateurish fair film. There is nothing wrong with the historical story. There is nothing wrong with the cinematography. There is nothing wrong with the music. Here comes the part that throws off the whole film:
1. The British actors (or actors pretending to be British) in this film which make up a good majority of the film are awful, awful, awful, awful actors. Bad bad bad bad. There is no excuse for such bad acting if the majority of the movie is going to include British actors. I wasn’t rooting for the evil British colonists to be killed because they were evil. I was rooting for them to be killed because I was waiting for them to get off the screen. But when one main British actor gets killed, he gets replaced with another bad British actor. Just plain awful. If the British acting would have been good or just neutral, the film could have been good. But in turn, it makes the film seem like an amateurish tv movie.
2. For anyone that has read online reviews and praises the action in this movie, it’s because they are Indian and they are just proud of any type of action choreography in their movies. The action is just plain bad, bad, bad, and bad. This movie has some of the worst laughable wirework that I have ever seen. And I like wirework. The actors are just nongracefully flung around like ragdolls. It looks totally amateurish and stupid. Furthermore, these fat warriors think they can just attach themselves to wires and do some Asian moves and think that they are all smooth and awesome looking. It wasn’t. It looks like these fat-ass warriors never did any type of training or physical activity in their lives. I don’t know who’s to blame but it’s a combination of the actors not caring, the director, and the fight choreographer. It was like watching fatties in a bloody version of a medieval live action role-playing game. There is only one actor in the movie that somewhat cared (you can tell that he lifted weights, unlike the other warriors who could care less how they looked). For anyone that even mentions this movie in the same realm as any Chinese martial arts film is truly retarded and can’t tell the difference between amateur fight choreography and professional fight choreography. The producers should have hired Sammo Hung (a well-known martial arts actor and fight choreographer who is heavy himself and knows how to make heavy people look suave in fight scenes).
3. The Indian acting is pretty good, but you just don’t feel for any of the characters – just not that gripping. People die, but you just don’t care. That’s the fault mainly with the screenplay.
Other than that, even though it’s an amateur B-movie, it’s certainly entertaining, not boring, and worth seeing what the big deal was for Malayalam cinema. The only direction to go from here is up. So they have to start somewhere. And since this is one of their most successful films, you got to give them credit for trying. Hopefully, they will correct some of the mistakes they made in this film in their future films.
The blu-ray is pretty good. After watching the whole film, I saw a bit more faults with it, such as white specs through out (not a big deal though) and the video quality was grainy and not as good during night scenes (once again, very common with many blu-rays). But for a Moserbaer blu-ray, this is a very impressive blu-ray since their DVDs are just plain awful. When you put the blu-ray in the player, it goes pretty much straight to the menu. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Malayalam rocks though – the sound was really good! Not one advertisement before the menu and no ads or logos popping up during the movie or songs. This is what a regular blu-ray is supposed to be like. And there is a song menu (just 3 songs). This company obviously did their blu-ray research! The English subtitles were okay. I don’t understand why Indians can’t get native English speakers to work on their subtitles. It will make the movie a lot better if the English subtitles make sense, don’t have spelling mistakes, and are grammatically correct! And there are no extras on the blu-ray.
KIRIKOU AND THE SORCERESS is a great animated film in the spirit of Hayao Miyazaki. French Director Michel Ocelot chose the legend of the little Kirikou, which he heard in his childhood, when he lived in Africa. In a little village, a pregnant woman hears her unborn son asking: “Mother, give me to birth!” After the initial surprise, she says calmly that if he can talk, he can be born by himself. The tiny boy, basically a super fast baby, crawls out of her, stands and says: “I am Kirikou.” He’s told then that almost all men there, including his father, were devoured by Karaba, an evil sorceress who oppresses the rest of the tribe. After saving the other children and his own uncle from her and making the local fountain run again, Kirikou runs off to see the old Wiseman in the mountain, the only person who knows how to defeat the witch.
In his movie, Michel Ocelot tried to reproduce the African art style. The result is gorgeous and plenty of color. The animation is a bit simple, but it’s still beautiful to look at. It’s mainly a 2-D animated movie with some use of CGI during Kirikou’s super-speed running. The women’s nudity and kids’ nudity might shock conservatives, yet they’re shown naturally, so don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. Since the movie takes place in an African village, conservatives always accept that it’s okay to see nude Africans a la National Geographic, but not nudity in other countries, which is hypocritical. The main reason this movie didn’t get released in the USA is the nudity. And we all know what a ridiculous prude country the USA is when it comes to nudity, but violence is okay.
As in Hayao Miyazaki movies, the protagonist doesn’t have to kill the villain to reach his goal. The movie’s message is that cruelty produces more cruelty, and that we should learn to forgive – since we aren’t so great ourselves.
The African-French music is excellent as well, with an unforgettable theme song that you will be humming to yourself after the end of the movie.
This Kirikuo character has franchise all written over it in a good way of course – a la Tintin or Asterix. The director has already filmed another Kirikou adventure, KIRIKOU ET LES BĘTES SAUVAGES, which is on France Blu-ray as well but no English subtitles. There is an English-subtitled NTSC Region 1 DVD of this one though.
I have had all the DVD versions of Kirikou: the letterboxed NTSC Region 1 DVD and the French anamorphic PAL DVD. The blu-ray is a big improvement over the anamorphic DVD. The blu-ray is brighter, crisper, and shows more detail. This movie needs to be seen on blu-ray! The English DTS 2.0 audio is excellent as well. There are some extras but don’t have English subtitles.
Excellent touching film. It’s a must buy, and totally entertaining for kids and adults!
Kray (aka The Edge) was Russia’s submission to the Best Foreign Film category for the 2010 Oscars. It’s a decent film, but it’s a “good film see-once” kind of film, not worthy of any major awards except for Best Train scenes at the Trains-In-Movies 2010 Awards which will be seriously competing against Tony Scott’s Unstoppable. The acting is very good, but the story doesn’t really kick in until the 30-minute mark when the German girl shows up. And when that story kicks in, it’s not as developed as it could have been.
Chinese action movies may have a kung fu scene once every 10 minutes.
Italian movies have characters screaming at each other once every 10 minutes.
French movies have characters sitting around the house in the city or country talking about philosophy and relationships once every 10 minutes.
Dutch or Danish movies may have a sex scene once every 10 minutes.
Indian movies have characters breaking out into song-and-dance once every 10 minutes.
And what I love about Russian movies is that they make sure to have a “drinking alcohol” scene once every 10 minutes. Those Russians love filming drinking!
For a train movie and by the looks of the flashy blu-ray cover, I was expecting a pretty intense ride, but instead this movie movies along at a leisurely pace. There are some pretty exciting scenes in this film, such as the main character and German girl working together to fix a broken bridge and then crossing that bridge, an all-nude female cat fight, and a couple train racing scenes.
The Russian blu-ray is labled as Region A, B, and C. The blu-ray video quality ranges from fair to excellent. The dark, dimly-lit scenes have DVD quality (3 out of 5), while the bright day scenes really look awesome (4 out of 5). And the Russian LPCM 5.1 is really a powerful force since the star of the audio are the trains – with the choo-chooing, the chug-chuging, the sound of the fire in the engine room, the screaching of the breaks, and so on. A very nice audio mix! There is only one funny thing with the soundtrack – whenever the German character speaks German, there’s a female Russian voice-over because Russians don’t like subtitles – they love their live-translations. But it’s not that distracting, and the German character doesn’t speak that much, so it wasn’t a big deal. The English subtitles were translated excellent eventhough they were a bit on the small side. The extras are a bunch of making ofs (non-subtitled).
If you like movies about trains and if you know what to expect from the typical pacing of Russian movies, then I recommend this film. Others expecting an intense action train movie may be disappointed.
Kooky is a great film for children as well as adults. It’s basically a combination of:
1. Toy Story films
2. Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are
3. that Bjork forest video
4. Hayao Miyazaki
5. Jan Svankmajer
Jan Sverak’s movie is about cuddly lost Kooky, Czech’s most famous toy doll, and his adventures to get back home. Along the way, he meets up with forest creatures, animals, garbage creatures. Some are nice and some are out to catch him. This movie is almost like a children’s version of The Road Warrior with plentiful car chase scenes (the forest creatures have their own little organic vehicles). Even though the story is a little bit similar to the ones in the Toy Story movies, this movie is like the anti-Toy Story. In Toy Story, everything is spotlessly clean, shiny, and bright. Kooky the movie is the most organic earthy film I think I’ve ever seen. The audience is face to face right in the nature, in the dirt, mud, water, dust, insects, but in a charming, cheerful way. This movie is an uplifting charming film. The direction in this film is just amazing, some of the best nature cinematography I’ve seen all year.
This movie also stars the director’s usual go-to-leading man Zdenek Sverek (the father of the director), who starred in Empties, Kolya, Accumulator 1, and Dark Blue World. If you’ve seen any of these good films, you’ll definitely recognize his voice as one of the forest creatures.
The Czech blu-ray is very solid. There are a lot of browns in this film (creatures and forest) and the video handles the very organic colors of the forest and the creatures very nicely. The Czech audio is very engrossing and you feel lost in the forest along with Kooky. A very impressive mix. The extras are all not subtitled – there’s a making of the film, two trailers, some photo galleries, and my favorite extra was a 3-minute making of how the factory workers make the actual Kooky doll. I wish that featurette would be longer and I would have loved to have seen a more in-depth documentary on the pop culture based around this popular Czech toy.
A very nice movie. Since it’s subtitled only, it’s mainly for older kids (and anyway there is one mention of sex in the movie and there’s a character named Captain Goddamn), so it’s definitely for those European kids more than the conservative American kids. But this film is a work of art and it’s worth seeing!
For anyone interested in independent animation, this film is worth buying! Jeff Lew is amazing. This guy made a full feature, 85 minute animated action film all by himself. He literally made this film all…by…himself! For that alone, you have to check this movie out. The blu-ray is worth buying just for extras alone. In the extras, there is a full in-depth making of the film on how to actually make an affordable animated film all by oneself. And he goes into great detail on what computer programs he used to make the film and how much time to realistically put aside to actually make a film project on their own. And it ain’t easy. While doing side jobs for MATRIX RELOADED and TRANSFORMERS 2, Jeff Lew spent all his time making KILLER BEAN FOREVER for around five years.
KILLER BEAN FOREVER is a simple yet beautifully animated action film starring coffee beans. It has some comedy in it (the mafia boss’ name is Cappuccino), but it’s played as a serious film. And it’s definitely not for kids. It’s totally violent, no blood, and sprinkled with some profanity here and there. If this film was rated, it probably would get a PG-13 rating. Killer Bean is a contract killer working for a secret agency – he has to deal with crooks, mafia, cops, martial arts masters. It’s a very cliched story, but totally entertaining with amazingly animated gun and martial arts action. KILLER BEAN FOREVER reminded me of a violent Pixar-style Toy Story-style animated film directed by Robert Rodriguez or John Woo.
The blu-ray video and audio quality is reference quality. Both the video and audio are perfect!
I haven’t been this impressed by an independent animated film since Alexander Woo’s RED STEELE: NAZI SMASHER. And that was just a short incomplete 10 minute flick. KILLER BEAN FOREVER is a complete feature-length film! I highly recommend the film and this blu-ray!
There is also a NTSC Region 1 DVD that you can order from Jeff Lew’s website which I did before I purchased the blu-ray, but the DVD was not playing well on my DVD player or blu-ray player. It’s basically an independently-made DVD so it’s bound to act fishy on some DVD players.
couchpotatofarm 