Batavia Girl

I guess you could say that Valentine (2017) is just another Indonesian female-led comic book movie, like Sri Asih. If there are any others, I'll probably watch those as well. 

A near future Indonesian Batavia City is in the grips of a crime wave. A journalist, Matthew Settle, thinks that if people had a role model, preferably female, it might turn the tide. He wants to make a movie, but can't find a pretty girl who is skilled at martial arts. Then, in a cafe, some toughs start acting up, and pretty waitress Estelle Linden lays them to waste. So Settle offers her a new job as star of his movie.

On their first outing, Linden quickly realizes that this "movie" is going to be wandering around the city. looking for crimes, her defeating the bad guys, and Settle and crew filming it on phones for social media. 

I won't get into the plot, because I've forgotten it. I did note that at no time did the populace seem to take hope from this young superhero - at least, they never turn on the gangsters. I'll also note that the fight choreography is mid-tier at best. But the style is largely pencak silat, which I enjoy watching, even if only on an amateur level. 

So, not a great comic book movie, or martial arts movie, or even a movie to encourage us to fight crime in our community. But fun enough so that I'll probably watch any other Indonesian comic book movie I find. 

Super Dog!

I was looking forward to seeing James Gunn's Superman (2025). The buzz was good, there's a dog in it (Krypto), and some other Justice ... Thingy members. 

It starts in the middle of things: Supes (David Corenswet) has been clobbered into the Arctic ice by a foe from over the horizon. He has recently stopped one comic opera dictatorship from invading a poorer neighbor, and the super-villain is aligned with the dictatorship. So he's pretty low. However, faithful dog Krypto shows up - to play with him. It takes a while, but he does get Krypto to drag him to the Fortress of Solitude, where his robots (voiced by Alan Tudyk, Michael Rooker, and Pom Clementieff) revive him with yellow sunlight. They also play his parents, Jor-el (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-van's final message to him - up to where it is damaged.b

Back in Metropolis, Supes is again clobbered, and we get to see part of why. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is controlling the fight from a nearby skyscraper. His tactics are based on years of studying Superman. But he calls his henchman off - this is just softening Superman up. By the way, Hoult is a great villain. He's been killing it lately. 

We get to see Corenswet as Clark Kent hanging out with coworkers, and fake-feuding with Lois. Because this Lois (Rachel Brosnahan) knows who Clark Kent is. At her apartment, she goads him into giving her an interview, and it gets under his skin. This is a cute scene, letting Corenswet get a little deeper into Superman's concern with Right and people's lives - and getting frustrated that everyone doesn't see it.

When Lex sends a tiny but quickly expanding kaiju to Metropolis as a distraction, Superman doesn't have to fight it alone. The Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), bowlcut ad all, along with Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) show up to help out. Fillion, a bit of a jerk, announces them as the Justice Gang, a name Merced denies. 

During this distraction, Lex's team invade the Fortress of Solitude, and steal the damaged message from Supe's parents. He is able todecode the damaged section, and discovers that the Kryptonians were urging their son Kal-El to conquer the puny Earthlings and bend them to his will. Releasing this causes everyone to turn on Superman, and for him to even start doubting himself. So he hands himself over to the government, who hand him over to Luthor. Who puts him in a pocket dimension prison, along with his ex-girlfriends. And he keeps him there with kryptonite.

Aside from being a well-made piece of modern action film, this movie has two things going for it. One is Corenswet's sweet, kind, ethical Superman - a man who says that trust in others is punk rock. The other is the goofy subversion of superheroes, like the obnoxious Guy Gardner. Ma and Pa Kent are decent, but basically toothless hicks. Jimmy Olsen is his old-style dweeby self, but also irresistable to women, including Luthor's bimbo girlfriend. And the biggest joke of all, Krypto - an annoying. poorly trained dog, who turns out to be Supergirl's. And she neglects him to go to party planets. 

I wonder if this is sustainable. The funny, deconstructed superhero movie seems to be ascendant now, with Gunn's The Suicide Squad or Thunderbolts* as examples. But keeping that tome with a hero who is sincere, kind, and just not that goofy might be tough. And even if Gunn (now in charge of the DC-verse) pulls it off, is this what we want? Are we never to have a serious, or scary, or awe-inspiring superhero movie again?

Who knows? who knows if the superhero movie will survive, or even movies at all. I guess I'll take them as they come. 

Step Right Up Ballerina

We are fans of John Wick, at least enough to watch Ballerina (2025) (though not the TV Continental show). Besides, I like action films led by women enough to watch anyway, even if there weren't much crossover with the Wickiverse.

It starts with assassin David Castaneda and his daughter being attacked in their swanky house. While she hides, Gabriel Byrne holds a gun to Castanedas head to flush her out. She creates a distraction, and they break out. Castaneda is shot, but she gets away. She is soon picked up by Ian McShane, who takes her to the her family, the Rusk Roma, headed by Angelica Huston.

Huston puts the girl into ballerina school, as well as assassin school. and she grows up to be Ana de Armas. She goes on a few missions - assassinations and bodyguarding - and on one she notices a mark like the one the people who offed her father wore. Huston lets her know that these people are part of a rogue cult. They don't just kill for money, they do it for sport. And Byrne is their leader. But they have a truce with the Ruska Roma. Neither will interfere with each other's business. Like the truce at the Continental, this rule exists to be broken. 

She also meets up with an assassin for the cult who looks a lot like her (Catalina Sandino Moreno). 

Of course, it all ends up with Armas against the cult. She gets some help from Moreno (guess who she turns out to be) and even John Wick. But even if she wins, she has broken the truce and will be hunted by both the cult and the Ruska Roma.

Without the Wick connection, I would say this is only a fair female-lead action movie. De Armas is taught early on that to defeat male opponents, she must force them to confront her on her terms, not theirs. This seems to mean either a kick in the nuts, or her just going a little bit crazier then them. Which culminates by the end in an almost silly flamethrower fight. Other than that we don't really see what makes her a great fighter. And I don't think de Armas has the martial arts chops that Reeves has to pull it off.

As a Wick spinoff, we get a bit of Ian McShane and a last scene from Lance Reddick (RIP), as well as plenty of Huston. Even Keanu has more than a few cameos. Add these together, and we found it a decent watch. But I don't think the spin-off will spawn a franchise. 

Opium Yen

We enjoyed the last Donnie Yen/Yuen Woo-Ping we watched, so we figured we'd try Heroes Among Heroes (1993).

Here, Yen is a rich kid whose father had sent him to live with beggars to learn humility when his mother died. It wasn't that effective - he's pretty arrogant. He meets a cute Westernized woman, Fennie Yuen. Her uncle is the Manchu prince, so Yen falls in with him as well. Meanwhile, Yen's father, Ng Man-Tat, is ruthlessly henpecked by his departed wife's sister, Sheila Chan with grotesque buck teeth.

Yen gets in a fight with the Fire Lotus Gang, a female gang. He defeats them, but does a lot of damage (and gets beat up pretty badly). So the prince introduces him to opium. 

The main story line is how the Manchu collude with the British to bring opium to the masses. Yen starts out leading gangs against the traffickers, then becomes addicted to opium, and has to kick the habit and regain his self-respect. So he takes refuge with his beggar foster father. He teaches him drunken kung fu as a counter strategy against the Manchu and British.

This was not really my favorite part. The fights are only so-so, and the opium threat is handled with little finesse. Actually, my favorite part was Sheila Chan playing auntie. Although she treats him poorly, we come to realize that she wants Yen's father to love her. When he finally snaps at her treatment and hits her, he knocks her buck teeth back to normal size and makes her express her love. It's rather misogynistic, and very silly, but kind of fun. 

So, not these guys' best outing. Really, they should have cut some of the plot and added a lot more fights. 

Drunken Fun

I chose to put Drunken Tai Chi (1984) on partly because it's just 91 minutes long - all I had time for. Good choice.

Let's see if I can summarize the plot. A very young Donnie Yen is the favored son of a rich salt merchant. His brother has to do all the work (and martial arts training), while Yen is supposed to be training. Of course, he is still a strong fighter. When a bully starts trouble on a bicycle, Yen fights back, leading to some bike jousting. The bully responds by gathering a gang to ambush Yen and his brother with fireworks. Again, he is defeated.

To avenge him,  bullie's father hires a mute assassin to kill Yen and his family. Note that this is a comedy.

Homeless and on the run, he meets an old puppeteer (Yuen Cheung-Yan) and his fat wife (Lydia Shum), who take him under their wing. They will teach him a soft method to counter the assassin's hard style. 

I am not sure about all of this plot. I was mostly watching for the set pieces. Take the bicycle jousts, or puppet fights, or fat lady kung fu. It was interesting to see some non-lethal kung fu in some of them. In one, the Yen and the bully have a contest with a two-ended brush suspended from the ceiling. The objective is to paint the other guys face before he gets you. You can see how this would work with a knife instead of a brush. It's both non-lethal, but it lets Yen draw silly faces on the bully. 

The assassin is fun, too (although he is NOT non-lethal). He has a beloved little son, and he makes him a rocking horse by punching and smashing logs into lumber. The other kids make fun of him, but the boy steadfastly defends his feral father. 

This is directed by Yuen Woo-Ping, who also made Drunken Master, and was stunt coordinator for a ton of films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I should have noted that before I started.  

Dream Scheme

We had the pleasure of watching Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme (2025) this week. We got exactly what we thought we would, but I don't think we got much more.

It starts in a private airplane in the 1950s, where we meet Benicio del Toro, playing dealmaker Zsa-Zsa Korda. The plane is suddenly shot down. Del Toro ejects his pilot and attempts a crash landing in a corn field. He finds himself in a black-and-white heaven, about to be judged, but comes to. Soon he is recuperating in a tub, in a large bathroom, with private nurses and champagne cooling in the bidet.

Tired of all the assassination attempts, del Toro contacts his estranged daughter, Mia Threapleton. She is a Catholic novitiate, and isn't interested in his business, but he has made her his heir. That way, if he is killed, no one but her will benefit. When we meet his nine preteen sons (by his three pre-deceased wives), they are pretty savage - I kind of suspected them. 

He explains his latest and greatest scheme: a massive overhaul of the country of Phoenicia. The plans are in several shoeboxes, one for each stage of the scheme, and their related funders. Then there's the Gap - the funding shortfall. He will take Threapleton along to see how he can close the gap. 

At an international secret law enforcement conference, Rupert Friend explains the del Toro, is an arms dealer and middleman who causes wars and peace where America and other governments don't necessarily want them. Friend plans to bankrupt del Toro by increasing the price of mashable rivets - increasing the Gap.

So we see del Toro meeting his investors and trying to swindle, charm or strong-arm them into putting some extra money in. These include Tom Hanks and Brian Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Almaric, Jeffery Wright and [REDACTED], his brother. All throughout, he is completely confident, even while being nearly killed over and over - visiting Heaven each time. His catch-phrase is "Myself, I feel very safe" - usually just before someone attempts to kill him. 

Del Toro also has a personal assistant, who is also an entomologist so he can lecture during downtime. He's played by Michael Cera, with a Swedish chef accent. He gets close to Threapleton, even though she's going to be a nun.

Del Toro's Korda (named after the classic filmmakers?) is quirky, resilient, supremely confident, and unreflexively amoral. He carries a crate of hand grenades around, and hands them out like cigars. He is always wounded but never slows down. He's rich enough to do business deals with the Catholic church. I'm not sure if he's meant to be likable, or just interesting. But he is definitely interesting. And I don't know if there's really much of a story here, although people do grow and change in good ways. 

But what the movie really delivers on is the Wes Anderson look - symmetrical frames, period pastels, odd details. Its story is not as convoluted as Asteroid City or as random as French Dispatch. So if you liked all the meta stuff in those, too bad. But if you don't care too much about playing with structure, and just want to see some Andersonic fun, this should work for you. 

Squared Jaws

SInce we enjoyed the original, we were looking forward to the sequel: The Accountant² (2025).

It starts in a bingo parlor/dive bar. Daniella Pineda is meeting up with J.K. Simmons, retired to private practice since the last movie. He wants her to find the Salvadoran mother, father and son in an old photo. She declines, but mentions that he has been followed. Soon, they are both fighting their way out. She escapes, but he is shot by a sniper. 

His replacement at the Financial Crimes Unit, Cynthia Addai-Robinson (from the last movie), sees that he has written "Find the Accountant" on his arm. But he (Ben Affleck) finds her first. After reviewing Simmon's pile o' evidence, he decides he needs to bring his brother, Jon Bernthal in to help. To get info on the gangs, they go to a cheap motel and order up a trio of hookers. Bernthal gently asks them to call their security guard. When he shows up, they stuff him into the trunk of Addai-Robinson's car. This is a little bit too illegal for her, so they split up.

Working on her own, she discovers that the woman in the old photo is Daniella Pineda. She had a bump on the head and developed Acquired Savant Syndrome, giving her amnesia and awesome martial arts skills. 

Meanwhile the brothers have figured out that the boy in the photo was separated from the family and is being trafficked. So it's off to Juarez for the big showdown.

First, I want to complain about the running time - there's no need for this to be 2 hours, 12 minutes. There's a scene early on where Affleck tries speed dating. He's reverse-engineered the algorithm to attract women, but his autistic personality drives them off. What is the point of this scene? I guess it's kind of funny, but doesn't contribute to the plot. And we don't really need it for characterization. 

Bernthal gets an introduction where he's trying to chat with a woman in a fancy penthouse. She's clearly terrified, but he just wants to get to know her. When he leaves, we see that he has killed everyone else in the room, but left her, since she's just sex-work bystander. It's a fine scene, a little long, but, you know, we might have enjoyed the action scene that came, unseen, before it. 

I do like Bernthal here. He's get a great look, all cheekbones and a broken nose. He is assured where Affleck is confused by the world of people and emotions. And they are great in the action schemes when we do get them.

We also get the Airstream from the last movie, as well as the home for weaponized autistic children. But this is treated like sacred lore - something for fans to drool over. It's all fine, but I wasn't as excited as I perhaps was supposed to be. 

Still, it was a fine action movie, and we managed to finish it over two nights. And I suppose we'll watch Accountant Cubed when they make it.