Movie Review: Rigor Mortis (Blu-ray)

Reviewed By: Jimmy D.

Rigor Mortis is a film going into it I have to admit I was really hyped up. I read all the glowing reviews and some of my blogging buddies went on and on about how this film is going to change the vampire genre. First time director Juno Mak has very high expectations with this film and he really works hard to create something unique but I just feel this film I was really expecting it to be better than it was. The actors for the most did a very good job, and the CGI stuff was really effective as well, but this film really had some bad pacing issues and it really takes its sweet time to really get going.

The mood of this film is dreary and depressing, which I felt for the most part was fairly effective at getting the message out, but I would have loved for this film to maybe interject something of a comic or light element, because as the film goes on it just seems that this film really was far more serious than fun. The film opens with an actor who tells us his career has went downhill and he is wondering how he is left in this shit. His wife has left him, took his son with her and now he is depressed. He moves into this rundown hotel and he hangs himself. The problem is while he is hanging he starts to see ghostly images, and before he breathes his last breath a man comes in and cuts the rope saving him. This near-death experience has made him a portal to two sisters who are ghosts to enter his body.

Movie Review: Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon (Well Go USA, Blu-ray, 2013)

Review By: Rob Sibley

Now this is a proper return to form! Tsui Hark has been (in my opinion) a slump until his previous film "Detective Dee". It was a very good take on a Sherlock Holmes style character dropped into the Tang Dynasty era. But the first film was hit and miss. Sure it was thrilling to an extent but at the end of the day it was underwhelming.

I'm happy to report part II  is better then the first. It's a damn near perfect film actually. I know many of you like me kind of tuned out on Hark after he made three clunkers in a row. Knock Off (not Van Damme's finest moment), Zu Warriors (horrid) and the fun but very cheesy Black Mask 2 which had Traci Lords, Tobin Bell and Tyler Mane. Then out of the clear blue came "Seven Swords" with Donnie Yen which made me think "This kat still might have it. Now skipping ahead to Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon. It's one of the best prequels of all time.

Movie Review: The Guillotines (We Pictures/Well Go Entertainment)

...being a devoted fan of martial arts cinema...from '70's old-school chop socky...to slick, action-driven, dramatically infused modern period pieces...this viewer often found himself particularly drawn to the quite imaginative, dynamic and exotic, albeit quite deadly weaponry, sometimes even more so than the prerequisite and choreographed hand-to-hand combat, in these films. The more exotic and constructively practical the weapon was, the more this viewer felt compelled to study it's historic use even further, even going as far as to verify whether or not the weapon was genuinely used by ancient warriors past, or was merely the imaginative product of the writers and filmmakers. Such was the case with the dreaded 'xuedizi'...a term literally translating into 'blood dripper', but to fans of chop socky cinema, this device was better known as the 'flying guillotine'. Amazingly enough, ancient history reveals that during the Quig Dynasty, covering a large era of time, from 1644 to 1912, the flying guillotine was indeed reportedly used by skilled Tibetan assassins...a skill which clearly involved amazingly keen and sightful precision (...the movies tend to make use of this weapon, look soooooo easy). The jaw-dropping level of dynamics, with regards to early martial arts films, was invariably raised, with the inclusion of this deadly and gruesome piece of precision weaponry, with the classic 1976 martial arts epic, "Masters of the Flying Guillotine", being the most famous, in featuring the fatal head-chopping tool. As visually compelling as the weapon was, it genuinely surprises most fans of martial arts cinema, that the flying guillotine wasn't utilized more in the movies; that disregard might well have seen long-overdue cessation, with the recent 're-invention' of the fatal bladed weapon, in 2012's visually striking, albeit heavily dramatic, and overly muddled martial arts epic, "The Guillotines"...