Hells to the No.

Again with the boasting: “I could whisper a suggestion and have you step in front of a subway train, I could force a neighbor to hurl you down a flight of stairs. I can put a baby in your belly that would rip its way out of your womb in three days–” Okay, I wanna see that last one. An angel boasts vacuously to the woman he is hunting… then walks away like a big-mouth douchebag without doing ANY of it…

The PROPHECY series once again falls to Earth like Satan banished from heaven. The previous entry, UPRISING, was quite intriguing and well-made (for a PROPHECY movie), but now all the insensate problems that made the first three films such dungheaps are again brought to the fore in this fifth entry, THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN.

Allison (Kari Wuhrer) returns, holding tight the Anti-Bible (which is really just the Bible with addenda), not letting it fall into the wrong hands. Those wrong hands belong to Angel Stark (Tony Todd, CANDYMAN). He’s the one with the big mouth and nothing to back it up except his love of Christ. He wants to know what God has dictated just on the very last page of Revelations – the name of the anti-christ, who will bring about Armageddon. He’s worried that all the humans who survive Armageddon will become the favorites of God, instead of the angels. Satan wants Armageddon to happen – to fill up his dance card, so helps Allison protect the Book. Meaning Allison is working with Satan to allow the anti-christ to live, so that Armageddon will happen and Bruce Willis will sacrifice himself for all our sins. So Stark wants to kill the anti-christ as a child, so that Armageddon won’t happen and the angels can remain the beloved of God…

This is the plot of PROPHECY: FORSAKEN. And we wonder why the bible makes utterly no sense.

Jason Scott Lee (SOLDIER) is wasted here as zealot Dylan, killed and brought back to life to serve Stark, but helps Allison escape Stark instead. He convinces curvy wet dream Wuhrer to get naked and change her clothes in an alley, to make her look like a hooker, because – he tells her – the angels hunting her won’t recognize her that way. Oh sure: we’ve ALL used that excuse to get a girl naked in an alley, right fellas?

John Light returns as Satan The Runway Model. (Is this not how they say the devil will come at you? Not as a monster, but as a dreamster. After numerous TV and video features, Light just doesn’t seem to have the agency clout to have landed the breaks that a guy with his stunning looks usually gets).

Stark acts like he’s sniffing out The Book, stashed within the wall; his eyes light up – he’s definitely smelled it! Punches a hole in the wall, drags out – a fake Book decoy! We ask ourselves: What the hell was he sniffing then? If he has the power to sniff out The Book, then that power should be telling him The Book is nowhere in this house! Joel Soisson is the numbnuts responsible for this debacle. (Producer on all three original PROPHECY films, and also writer of DRACULA 2000 and its sequels; strangely enough, Soisson also wrote and directed the previous PROPHECY: UPRISING, which was surprisingly good. Now even more of a surprise after noting his track record!

A homeless guy stabs Allison. She’s suddenly Black Widow and kicks his ass. Then she has to Act Her Stab Wound every so often and wince, so we don’t mistake the red dye on her sweater for red dye. When she shouts at Dylan, “All we have to do is believe!” I kicked over the TV and cancelled my Netflix account. You just DON’T say that line in a movie and expect to be taken seriously anymore.

And look – here’s the name of the anti-christ. Spoiler Alert: It’s the nicest member of Monty Python. See how the devil comes at us? As MICHAEL PALIN!

The last page of the Book Of Revelation: The Life Of Brian.

END

Kung Fu Ping Pong Panda.

BALLS OF FURY is not about ping pong. It’s about Being a Man. It’s about Honor. It’s about uplifting the Human Spirit with–ah, who am I kidding? It IS about ping pong.

Starring Dan Fogler, George Lopez, Maggie Q, and the guy who does the second best Christopher Walken impersonation in the world – Christopher Walken (dressed like a geisha slut and sporting a ‘do more audacious than Gary Oldman in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA).

Walking that fine comedy line just above Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, BALLS OF FURY is so wilfully asinine it succeeds.

Directed by Robert Ben Garant and written by Garant and Thomas Lennon (renowned for his Officer Dangle on TV’s RENO 911, with a penchant for wearing tourniquet-tight shorts), BALLS is a journey deep into the dark heart of underground ping ponging, where Feng (Walken) gathers the best players from around the world to take part in a sudden death (literally) ping pong competition. Is it coincidence that Walken overlords these scenes like the Vietnamese slave-traders in THE DEER HUNTER who forced him to play Russian roulette? Only now, the chopstick is on the other won ton. How the writers make this death match plot instrumental in Feng ruling the world is anyone’s illogical guess.

Lopez is the FBI “Secret Agent Man” who enlists the aid of ping pong prodigy and Def Leppard fan, Randy Daytona (Fogler), a child star now grown lazed and portly on Vegas matinees, to infiltrate Feng’s operation and nab him – for what, I still can’t quite figure.

Excellent performances (especially from Fogler) and a highly stupid script keeps BALLS on its toes: James Hong as the blind mentor; Jason Scott Lee as a fried-furious kung fu antagonist; Diedrich Bader as a fruity courtesan, Thomas Lennon as a wild-eyed German champion who’s wardrobe choices somehow emulate Officer Dangle’s – hip-hugging leotards and shorts so tourniquet-tight we can see his balls of fury.

END

Jeet Kune Don’t.

Bruce Lee was an artisan, an innovator, an indomitable warrior, a genius. Inspiring many to create tributes to him. It unfortunately does not follow that those inspired to create these tributes are creative enough or qualified enough to do those tributes justice. Such is the case with DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY.

The Way of the Cucumber

Not really a story about Bruce Lee, more the story of a character type from the Cliché Handbook of Action Film Heroes (Body-Oil Edition). And not so much a “tribute” as a “gratuitous insult”; excepting Jason Scott Lee‘s physical prowess (as Bruce Lee) and the overwhelming hotness of Lauren Holly (as Bruce’s Caucasian wife Linda), DRAGON boasts absolutely no redeeming qualities. But lots of body-oil.

The dramatic contrivance of the “po-boy-immigrates-and-makes-good” was bad enough, even if it were true (which it is not) but then, in a film where assault and battery assumes a form of high art in the hands of the film’s protagonist, we viewers are summarily assaulted and battered by the artlessness of the film-makers who opted for cliché over substance at every turn.

In Lee’s first fight at the prom, he conveniently loses his shirt (a la Vintage Kirk) – beneath the shirt, judiciously body-oiled like a seal at a massage parlor, big dumb white sailors not so much being beaten up by him as sliding off his pecs like penguins and hitting their heads on the floor.

The gym scene, and more big dumb white guys (and a token black guy) assault Lee for no reason – remember that these were simple bygone days, when big dumb white guys were unaware that Every Asian Person Knows Kung Fu.

Clichés for breakfast, lunch and dinner: We’ve got the mother who doesn’t approve, the white chick love interest contra cultural blessing, the battered loft converted into the martial arts school, the racism, the idiot antagonists attacking the hero with meat cleavers (which they never think to THROW at him), the kung fu veterans ordering Bruce to stop teaching – or else – ! We’ve got the obligatory husband & wife confrontation (once again the wife bitching as her husband achieves a fame that she can only ride the coat-tails of: “I don’t know who you ARE anymore!” – how about “the guy who keeps you wealthy and your social status high”?). Even if many of these aspects were marginally accurate (such as Lee’s wife truly being the ideal 70s stunner), film unfolds in paint-by-numbers that undermines even the accurate elements.

Then there’s the goofy Black Knight character that haunts Bruce’s dreams, proving beyond a doubt that the filmmakers were higher than the publicist who engineered Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction.” Besides the fact that this was an insulting dramatic metaphor for the mystery surrounding Lee’s untimely demise, how dare the filmmakers presume that this metaphysical nonsense in any way rationalizes, palliates or absolves the misfortune of Bruce’s passing?

Enter the Bad Guy combatant – we can tell he’s the Bad Guy on accounta his scowl and ominous theme music, and his body-oil is a whole inch thicker than Bruce’s. And Bruce’s debilitating cliché-defeat at his hands is achieved by CHEATING, of course. It’s all true. Hollywood tells us so.

Then we are treated to the obligatory montage of the Hero regaining his prowess through his Iron Will and jump-cut editing – all due to his HOT WIFE’S pep talk – yes, if it weren’t for bony, bossy Linda Lee, we’d never have Jeet Kune Do or ENTER THE DRAGON.

Bruce’s book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, was published posthumously – but in this film, he miraculously receives a copy while recovering from his bogus back injury – a miracle only Hollywood could achieve. We cannot even disregard the fallacies of this movie and focus on the broad strokes to glean Bruce’s life story, for those broad strokes themselves are indiscernibly shrouded in misinformation.

Much like CAPRICORN ONE, another film which insults the viewer from frame one to conclusion, with misinformation and egregious stupidity sprinkled so liberally throughout its makeup that you cannot find any one point to logically start unraveling the threads of idiocy.

One such example of just how IGNINT the filmmakers believe us to be is the scene in which we are made privy to the methods on how to film a movie, with the fight scene on the “last day of filming on THE BIG BOSS.” With just ONE tripod-mounted camera, they captured no less than 43 camera angles, and also captured slow motion shots without once loading different-speed film! Then, apparently you have to rip the film out and throw it on the ground in order to develop it, which is what Bruce does. Very informative! And all true, of course. Hollywood tells us so.

Ironic that these film-makers, who attempted to portray a pioneer who fought to elevate the martial arts film above that of B-Movie schlock, unwittingly created B-Movie schlock. Though their intentions may have started out sincere (which I doubt), what is left on the screen is a rancid marketing vehicle cashing in on Bruce’s fame.

We can only hope that one day there will be a more reverent, less body-oiled, more factual movie to celebrate the life and achievements of The Little Dragon.

END