Shameless Self Expression

Seoul fund manager and ne’er-do-well father Yoo Gong is taking daughter Kim Soo-an on the train to visit mum in Busan. Not the best time for it. After a clearly ill woman on board the train attacks a train attendant, it sets off a chain reaction of people on board being turned into horrible, raging zombies. Kim Eui-sung plays the requisite selfish a-hole on board whose level of self-preservation cowardice is truly jaw-dropping.   The only zombie movie that has ever really gotten me emotional, this 2016 film from South Korean writer-director Yeon Sang-ho (his live-action directorial debut) is also one of the few times in a zombie movie where I’ve been upset with a particular character being bitten. And it happens several more times throughout the film. This film doesn’t spare you, and I totally understand the hype on this one. It’s terrific.   The zombies look great, the human behaviour is relatively plausible, the scenes of chaos and destruction are excellent, and at t...

CIA boss Sparks (spaghetti western and low-budget ninja movie veteran Richard Harrison) sends agent Derek Carpenter (Christopher Mitchum) to South America to bring down a local drug baron (Christopher Lee). Cristina Higueras plays Lee’s daughter. Brigitte Lahaie is Carpenter’s local contact who as a score to settle with him.   The bad boy of sleazy Euro cinema Jesus Franco ( “Vampyros Lesbos” , “Eugenie de Sade” ) went PG-13 with this obscure 1988 action movie of sorts. It’s this awkward thing where the only people who will even have an inclination to check this out are Franco fans, but a lot of those Francophiles won’t like it for how mild it is. This isn’t an exploitation or horror film, it’s a low-budget action film with actually not a whole lot of action in it until the finale. If anything the film probably would’ve benefitted from the usual Franco touches of zoom-happy camerawork, and large helpings of sex and violence. Here it feels as if Franco were a mere director-for-h...