Blood, Guts, and Rock N Roll!

I saw two movies today that have changed my life forever. It's possible they took the maximum quota of awesomeness allotted to the Universe (which totals 64) and shoved it right into my face. 

We start with:

I shouldn't even have to write a review on this one. The cover art says it all. But I'll lay out the plot for you anyhow. See, Japan is a beautiful, gun-free utopia. But they have one dirty little secret. A massive bully problem.  (No, this isn't the plot - this is just my observations on Japan through my historically accurate DVD collection.) So anyhow, Hot Girl's brother and his friend are being bullied (see?) by the son of the local Yakuza boss and his friends. They eventually kill them because they couldn't pay up on their 200,000 yen milk money debt. So Hot Girl takes revenge and gets herself chopped to pieces, because, well, if she succeeded so early on the movie would be over too soon. Fortunately, the spirit of her dead brother leads her mangled body to a friendly mechanic couple who put her back together with a machine gun arm. 

(Yes, that's a decapitated body behind her!) So she and Hot Mechanic Lady (who has a very Bruce Campbell chainsaw arm) go and exact their revenge. The End. 

Ok, the plot is weak - but that's where this movie actually shines. You see, normally Japanese movies can be kinda slow and try to get all artsy with their deep talky plots (like the British and their constant door opening and matchstick counting) but not this flick. It starts with about 1 million decapitations before the main title even pops up. In fact, I'm pretty sure the title decapitates somebody. I give this flick 10 meatballs. 

Why meatballs? Because this movie is from the creator of Death Trance and...

What can I say about Meatball Machine? Nothing at all. Ok something. The best I can figure is its an adult version of The Power Rangers. Okay, that doesn't do it justice because it's so much more. It's a love story of forbidden love. It's a sci-fi thriller meets moral decisions in a post-9/11 world. It's ... 

Well, maybe this picture will help:

No? Oh, I get it - I wasn't clear. She's being driven by this little guy who's attached on her shoulder:

Makes sense now right?

My head hurts.

The Comedy Musings of Tolstoy!

Who knew Russians were so funny? Wait, they're not. In their defense, I'm pretty sure Russia sucks. I mean, why else are they coming across our borders and stealing all our jobs? But when a movie touts the line, "If you liked movies like Severance and Shaun of the Dead you will definitely get a kick out of this BRILLIANT HORROR COMEDY," you expect a guffaw or two. In retrospect I should have known they were up to something - who the hell puts an entire paragraph blurb on the front of the box? And why is Stephen Dorff in it?

Botched tries to master the art of British "awkward funny." Instead, its just awkward. These people have all the excitement and joy of a Celebrating Stalin Convention - Trust me, that's Russia's equivalent of E3.

It has a stellar cast though. A grumpy fat russian man. A grumpy ex-russian solider. A grumpy hot chick. A grumpy stupid guy. An old grumpy fat Jesus-lady.

Look! Here's Grumpy Hot Chick killing Grumpy Jesus-lady, presumably 'cause she's grumpy!

Why is this funny? Well, because she's killing her ... with a nail file! HILARIOUS! (?!?!?!?)

I give this movie one of these:

Now that's Zany!

Moving on to a good movie.

Gun Crazy: The Woman From Nowhere.

Now that's a movie title. This movie features everything good about Japanese cinema. It also shows how much Japan hates Americans. Sure our Marines rape their children and back over them accidently with our tanks, but forgive and forget right? Not only are the American soldiers in this movie represented as raving lunatic-murdering-idiots, but they actually dub their voices with even dumber English voice actors saying even dumber things. It's awesome to see an English dude dubbed over in English. You can only imagine the director was like, "Stupid American actor. I am directing a new version of Hamlet! It will be Fantabulous! Just read these lines. That's right! Excellent! Of course I'm not going to record over all your dialog in post-production and make you look like the idiots you really are. HAHAHAHAHA!"

Or something.

And since I couldn't find a totally awesome picture of the main character killing the bad guys with her rocket launcher leg (you heard that right) I'm leaving you with this picture of the actress on the latest issue of J-POP Monthly. 

Oh, by the way, this movie will rock your face off! And if you have ADD, its only like 70 something minutes long. 70 minutes of PURE AWESOME!

Which brings us to:

Coffin Sitter 2: I Hate Underwear!

Wait, no, that's Death Trance. 

First of all, the title alone screams RADICAL! But the movie is superb. You'd be forgiven if you had no idea what the movie was about based on the picture so allow me to clarify. It's about a perpetually hungry ninja that stole a coffin and drags it around behind him with a little girl. Now the locals thinks he eats little girls but that's just not true - he drinks milk. So rival ninja's and spider vampire ninja's and zombie ninja's and hot ninja's and gay ninja's go after him because (of course) the coffin grant's your wishes. But the coffin dude is actually a fallen angel with amnesia and has to go to heaven to fight in a huge final "war in heaven" battle. Makes perfect since. 

Oh, and it's historically accurate. See... 

This movie gets 11 Gay Ninja's! The Happy Kind!

... Happily Homosexual.