San Diego Comic Con Film Reviews

To begin a two day marathon of upcoming film reviews, we have Hollyfeld's take on two movies. He managed to see The Duel and Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. I am really excited about the last one. I have been a longtime fan of Smith and I cannot wait to see the last Jersey Installment. In the next column installment, I'll review Osmosis Jones which I had the pleasure of seeing last week when it held it's World Premiere in Montreal.

The Duel Review

"Hollyfeld, here. While attending the San Diego Comic Con this year I had the privilege of seeing a few movie premieres, two of which I review for you here today. The other film I attended, Elvira's Haunted Hills, I have decided not to review for various reasons, but I will state for the record once more that I liked it very much, although it is, by intention, extremely stupid.

My second film of The Con, after Elvira, was The Duel, a martial arts film from Andrew Pau, director of the hit film, The Stormriders. I confess to not having seen Stormriders, although I have it on good authority that it's pretty kick ass. For those not in the know, Stormriders is the hit martial arts (and comic book) film whose release a few years ago was a large part of the reason Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon performed so poorly in Asia - according to its fans, Stormriders is a much, much cooler film. I purchased an unedited copy at the Comic Con (finally. I've been looking for this film for months), and will probably be reviewing it in Look Closer... in the next few weeks..

The Duel is Andrew Pau's follow up to Stormriders, and as any American director will tell you, deciding what to do after making a hit film is a daunting task. Pau decided to take a well-known Asian book, seven volumes long, and adapt its third volume into The Duel. (No, I didn't catch its title - sorry.) The Duel is a well-known story in its home country, and was already turned into a successful TV series in 1978, so in order to keep the story and movie fresh, Pau decided to add a whole load of top flight Asian stars, and throw in a lot of sex and mystery. Being a relative virgin in the ways of Asian cinema (I am currently making a concerted effort to fix this problem), I didn't recognize more than a few of the stars, but it's clear that the filmmakers threw in everything but the kitchen sink in order to make this movie successful.

No, wait. There was a kitchen sink. Never mind.

The Duel tells a story set in China many centuries ago - Agent Dragon 9, also called Four Eyebrows, is in the service of the Emperor, and hot on the trail of The Ghost King, a master thief. Ghost King has convinced his many apprentices that Four Eyebrows is, in fact, the Ghost King, and attempts to have him killed. Four Eyebrows handles himself masterfully, but is nonetheless saved by the sudden appearance of Snow, one of the greatest swordsmen in the land. Ghost King is killed whilst trying to escape, and Four Eyebrows returns to home base. There he finds the Emperor's brother, himself a master swordsman, has issued a challenge to Snow - a duel on the rooftop of the Forbidden City, home to the Emperor. Four Eyebrows takes this message to the Emperor, who promptly agrees - the two greatest swordsmen in the world in a one-on-one duel is too great a spectacle to miss. But when mysterious murders begin to occur, Four Eyebrows begins to suspect the worst. a conspiracy may surround the mysterious duel, but who is behind it? The Emperor's brother, or Snow?

As stated earlier, The Duel has a little bit of everything stuffed inside it, from wild, special-effects driven swordplay to thoroughly wacky humor to high concept drama. Your enjoyment of the film, however, will depend entirely on your tolerance for the latter two, or rather the uneven mixture thereof. The Duel constantly alternates from serious romantic drama to wild visual gags - a technique that I found particularly distracting. The character of Four Eyebrows is very much akin to Austin Powers, a joke in and of himself, but also reminiscent of Vash the Stampede, surprisingly capable when need be. But Snow, for example, has an iconic dramatic warrior spirit, completely at odds with the presence of Four Eyebrows in the storyline. Still, although the tonal shifts are abrupt and off-putting (at least, for this American viewer), no one could ever say that the film was boring. If nothing else, that's a strong selling point.

Of course, the real matter at hand is. how are the action scenes?

Well pretty damned interesting, that's for sure.

Andrew Pau's action scenes are far more special-effects heavy than many other martial arts films, and as a result are often dazzling, but also somewhat confusing. Snow's battle with the stone giants (just watch the movie) is breathtakingly shot, but YOU try to figure out exactly what's going on. No, really. I dare you. Other sequences are breathtaking however - particularly the first and last. The opening features Four Eyebrows facing off against not one, but an entire group of swordswomen, all of whose moves are completely synchronized. It's a breathtaking sight and possibly the best in the film. And, of course, at the end there is the actual "duel" of The Duel, which, although dazzling and technically impressive, is extremely short, and therefore something of a letdown.

There were other problems to be noted with The Duel - some scenes were obviously filler material, the character of Phoenix has nothing to do (maybe this is just me talking, but if a character brags about her fighting ability in a martial arts movie, she should at least be involved in ONE fight scene), and the very ending seems a little false - but there is no denying that it's an entertaining piece of filmmaking, and worth watching for the talent behind it, if nothing else. Though not the best martial arts film I've ever seen (in this case at least, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was better), it's a pretty darn interesting one.

A Review of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Kevin Smith has finally made his Animal House. You may recall that that was his intention with Mallrats, easily the least successful film in his Jersey film series, but this time he has done it for real, and it is by far the funniest film of the year. In fact, in it's own little way, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back is quite possibly the most perfect film so far this year. It's a film that knows exactly what it wants to be and accomplishes that goal with such vivacity and wit that it cannot be completely ignored. It's one of those rare films, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Evil Dead 2, that I can watch once and know right off the bat that I'll have seen it about 100 times before I die. That does not, of course, make it one of the best films of all time - but it may be destined to go down as one of my favorites.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back features Jason Mewes and writer/director Kevin Smith as Jay and Silent Bob. (Duh.) As you may recall from Smith's earlier film, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob were made into highly successful comic book characters several years ago, and have been receiving royalties for the use of their likenesses. What they were not aware of, however, was the fact that Bluntman and Chronic, the comic that features their mugs, is about to be turned into a big budget movie from Miramax. and of course, they have not seen dime one. They go to Holden MacNeil, co-creator of the comic, to ask, essentially, "What the Fuck?" and discover that Holden sold his half of the property to his partner, Bankie. On top of all this, Jay and Bob learn that all the fanboys writing Talkbacks on the internet are talking shit about them, so they decide to trek to Hollywood to both destroy the production and protect their good names. Hilarity ensues.

If any of that last paragraph was confusing, it was probably because you are not familiar with all of Kevin Smith's previous films: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. In fact, the biggest flaw with the film is that it has so many in-jokes from the previous films that anyone who is unfamiliar with them all probably won't get them all. For the rest of us, of course, hearing Holden say, "It's times like this that make me miss dating a lesbian" will be one of the funniest things we ever heard. Other self-reflexive details include (finally) an explanation of the final shot of Mallrats, featuring Jay and Silent Bob walking down a lonely highway, hand-in-hand with an ape named Suzanne. That's right - we finally get to meet the famous, and delightful, orangutan that has been plaguing our Kevin Smith conversations for years (well, mine anyway).

The film also features a group of Charlie's Angels-esque jewel thieves, a hapless Wildlife Marshall played by Will Ferrell, and countless cameos, including a certain comic book character Smith cut his teeth on. As for the Matt Damon rumor, yes, he's there, as Matt Damon no less, in Good Will Hunting 2: Huntin' Season (one of the more hilarious scenes of the film), along with Mark Hamill, in one of the best roles of his career: Cockknocker.

Actually, Cockknocker brings me to one of the most pleasant surprises of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Until now, even though Smith's films were written extremely well, they looked like, well, crap. Jay and Silent Bob, however, looks and feels like a real film - all of the sight gags play off, and there are even a few (dare I say it?) impressive sequences to be seen, including a pretty damned awesome lightsaber duel between Jay, Bob, and Cockknocker. Oops. did I say lightsaber? I meant Bongsaber, for the duel in question takes place on the set of the Bluntman and Chronic movie (a set SO impressive that even Jay has to admit, "This must have set them back a couple of hundred bucks"). I think the experience of working on the animated series, where any camera angle or effect is possible, helped Smith realize the full visual potential of his storytelling - in fact, the film has an eerie similarity to the style of the show in a fantastic Planet of the Apes fantasy sequence, featuring none other than Clerk's Dante and Randal as the victims of the most heinous acts ever inflicted by Ape-kind.

Smith's latest movie is his first ever to effectively be comedic both with and without dialogue, and there are many scenes that are bound to go down in history as his funniest. Again, if you are unfamiliar with Smith's other work, you may be a bit confused (Smith himself writes several scenes with Jay explaining the plot, where people who don't know him don't have a clue what he's saying), so a good trip to the local video store may be advisable. The rest of us, however, are about to be treated to Smith's funniest film since his first one, and maybe his best. Unlike Chasing Amy or Dogma, there probably isn't a point to be found, but it's more madcap hilarity than should probably be put in any one film.

Wow, that was complimentary. I wonder if the studio will quote me?

Hollyfeld, out."

(Reviews submitted by 'Hollyfeld.')

Stay tuned...

That's all folks...

Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)

Questions, comments, praises etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org

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Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in such major websites as Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt Magazine. Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.