New Rose Hotel (1998)

Directed by: Abel Ferrara
Run time: 93 minutes

When I saw this movie in high school I was rather disappointed. I liked Johnny Mnemonic and when I found out this movie I had to watch it as well. Being a teenager and insufferable ass I found this movie boring. My thoughts at the time was that it need an 80's stereotypical covered in chrome stomping on some suit while in car chase with gun fire. I don't think my teenage self was wrong but I'm older and I have read most of what William Gibson written.  So a re watching was in order and it proved that my teenaged self was an idiot. 

The story is about two mega corporations, two experts in corporate extraction, a girl, and bio engineering rock star.  Hiroshi is a bio engineer character has the ability to walk into a lab and turn out numerous multimillion dollar patients. This makes his mega corporation Maas a lot of money and gives character anything he wants.  However this is not making him happy and he is looking for greener pastures.

This is where Fox (Christopher Walken) and X (Willem Dafoe) come in. They are freelance corporate extraction experts and they are more than willing to help character get out of Maas' grasp and working their rival Hosaka. In order to get close to Hiroshi they need an intermediary who can sell him on finding happiness with Hosaka. Luckily for X and Fox they found the perfect agent for this in Sandii (Asia Argento). So Fox and X train her to seduce Hiroshi so she can convince him to leave his wife and Maas. During Sandii's training Fox falls for her and slowly the simple extraction plan gets complicated

Time passes and Hiroshi follows Sandii from Maas to Hosaka. Fox and X help set up a lab on Hosaka's behalf for Hiroshi in Marrakesh. Fox and Sandii make plans to give up life as corporate pawns and get married. X learns that Marrakesh is being coming the site for an impromptu convention for  Hosaka's top scientists. This leads to Fox and X being distracted by their divergent interests. That is when the complication from earlier happens it forces everyone to deal with the fallout.







This movie is a rather faithful adaptation of the William Gibson short story with the same name. It gets the feel of Gibson's writing and presents the story in the same quick pace that his short stories take. The leads are great in both performance and casting. That being said, the run time being padded with cuts from unsteady surveillance camera footage really took me out of the film. Also there are long scenes of dialog that make the film seem to drag. I get the scenes in question are there to develop the characters and to cut down on cost but it would have been nice if they shorten those scenes and shown more of the world or shown more.

Overall my younger self needed a punch to the head, this is a solid cyberpunk film, and a good Gibson adaption. This is a must watch if you are a hardcore cyberpunk fan and or William Gibson fan.

Make or Break: The unsteady surveillance camera footage did a hell of a job of jarring me out of the film. I get it was made in the 90's but less would have been better.

MVT: This film shows smart phones years before they were a thing.

Score: 5.9 out of 10

Ganheddo a.k.a. Gunhed (1989)

Directed by: Mastro Harada (the American version is an Allen Smithee production)
Runtime: 100 minutes

Toho Studios (home of Godzilla) and Bandai (home of Gundam) got together to make a movie. A movie full of explosions, giant robots, giant robots fighting other giant robots, McGuffins, a mustache twirling A.I. with a easily defeated plan for world domination, more explosions, weird looking junk robots, weird and annoying kids, and a plot. Sadly if this movie had not been dubbed by a bunch of muppets it would be a greater film than what it is.

The movie opens with two exposition dumps. The first one is a text only explanation about the McGuffin Texmexium. A element that makes super computers even more super and gives all your food that south of the border. There is also an explanation that computer chips and plastics are now more valuable than gold. The other exposition dump explains island 8JO. A island owned Kyron corporation and is home to their manufacturing facility. Overseen by Kyron 5 (the company AI) and a hand full of human caretakers take care of the day to day operations. Years later Kyron 5 starts behaving like a moody teenager and goes to war with the world because no one understands it. We then get to see the last battle between the Gunhed battalion and Kyron 5's defenses.

Years later the movie catches up with a mercenary group heading to island 8JO to steal computer chips from the Kyron 5. I would write more about the mercenary group but all but two of then will be dead before the thirty minute mark. The survivor Brooklyn is a mechanic and is afraid to sit in any cockpit. Babe is a near survivor and has a really cool cybernetic eye patch.

So the mercenaries land on top or the Kyron factory and notice a burning Texas Air Ranger's transport on another part of the island. But the mercenaries don't why their transport is burning or feel like telling the audience who the Texas Air Rangers or why they should care. Instead the mercenaries head into the factory so they can get killed off until Brooklyn and Babe are left alive.

Brooklyn and Babe avoid getting killed as they head the Kyron's and meet with Sgt. Nim. The only survivor of the Texas Air Ranger's transport and in pursuit of a bioroid that stole some Texmexium. So the three of them head to the central processor room where the Texmexium could be located. The trio arrives and finds that there is nothing there but the bioroid shows up and puts the Texmexium in to the processor stand. Having completed it's task, it dives into the Mountain Dew that cools the processor and waits to menace the survivors later.

Being that no one has died in the last five minutes, Babe falls into the Mountain Dew cooling system and dies for no reason. With nothing better to do, the two of them get out of the processor room and run into the end boss robot and are forced to fall into the second act and the rest of the cast are introduced. Brooklyn wakes up to meet Seven and Eleven. Two kids that have been living on their own in the lower levels. Eleven is an older girl who does not speak and Seven is a younger boy who does not shut up. It also does not help that whoever dubbed the voice of Seven is downright annoying.

With help from Seven, Brooklyn find a damaged gunhed and the two of them get it repaired and working. Nim and Eleven take the Texmexium and go climbing to the top of the factory. While Brooklyn and Seven have a repair montage as they fix the gunhed. Elsewhere in the Kyron factory a terminal menacingly counts down. It would be more suspenseful if we knew why it is counting down.

Remember the bioroid? It is still in the movie and stalking Nim and Eleven. The bioroid also possessed by Babe because dying in computer cooling Mountain Dew does that to people. So the bioroid has a hard time killing people but no problem stealing the Texmexium from Nim with a laser thing. At the bottom of the factory, the gunhed is fix, armed, and ready to fight again. This leads to the last act of this movie which is mostly the gunhed and Brooklyn bonding while trying to get to the lever where the central processor is located.

When gunhed and Brooklyn reach the central processor level they are confronted by the end boss robot. With quick thinking, effective use of fire power, and the power of bromance the two of them defeat the boss robot. Brooklyn and Seven meet up with Nim and Eleven who have made it back to the central processor room.

Eleven knows a word that can improve the Kyron AI, so her mouth starts glowing. With the destruction of the boss robot this stops the glowing and she can talk again. The Kyron AI seeing that is beat does the smartest thing a antiongist can do. It sets it's reactor to self destruct in fifteen seconds and it will take our heroes ten mintutes to get to the mercenary transport and escape. However gunhed saves our heroes by stalling the reactor. So our heroes fly away from the nuclear mushroom cloud. The end.

This is a flawed movie with insane dubbing but it is a fun movie. I suggest watching this but try to find the Japanese version.

MVT: The gunhed itself. It is a talking tank that can transform to a robot.

Make or Break: The crap dubbing is the major break for me with this movie.

Score: 6.25 out of 10