Ninja Assassin Premiere Screening VIFF09

It's so bad, it's good.

With a surprise introduction by director James McTeigue, the Vancouver Film Festival premiere screening of Ninja Assassin, was met with an excited audience, who knew exactly what they were in for -- pure entertainment.

Your typical martial arts revenge formula: Renegade assassin, check. Hordes of disposable ninja goons, check. Head villian with nasty facial scar, check. Chick trying to investigate secret ninja clan, so check! And if you didn't know better, you'd probably think this was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the movie, something I couldn't stop thinking about during the entire length of the flick.

Amped up on high tech graphics, cartoony, over the top violence, and structured in a way that could be broken down into mangas, animes, or videogame levels, (or videogame titles, for that matter), the movie hits all the high points, in between the bits of story that the audience could care less about.

What more can you expect from a movie titled "Ninja Assassin"? Ninjas trying to kill other ninjas, of course. With the backing of the crew who worked on The Matrix series, the movie is a visual effects feast, with some padding of events to move the plot, Ninja Assassin, is an entertaining film, that really isn't anything else.

More videogamey than The Matrix, Ninja Assassin is like watching a videogame play out on screen. Any gamer would be able to pick out bits of Ninja Gaiden, and Mirror's Edge, in the film. It also has a feel of old 90s martial arts B movies, where the fight choreography takes center stage, while the rest is filler. The bad acting, and attempts at making the actors seem intelligent, and the supposed drama between them, are cheesy at best.

The fight scenes and stunt work are top notch, fused with lots of visual effects, lots of blood, limbs, and the Bullet Time style to really drive the point home. There's even a roof top scene, in which our main character has a neo-dodging-bullets moment, only thing is, he doesn't dodge them.

This film of course, has bigger, slicker production values to camouflage lack of any real depth. Not that the movie needs it, because that's not what Ninja Assassin is trying to be. If you're looking for an over the top, VFX heavy action flick, this would be it.

They Wait VIFF Screening: They Wait, delivers thrills, and chills, in a formulaic package, but a unique story with enough scares to keep the most jaded film goer satisfied, makes this movie worth watching. Vancouver International Film Festival

The immigrant experience of Chinese to the western world in the early 1900's was no doubt a difficult time. Hard enough was being so far from home, but dying in an unfamiliar place, a world away from family, was a fear many hoped to avoid. The practice of sending the bones of the deceased back to homeland, to be buried alongside ancestors was a common superstitious practice. Yet, what would happen if your bones never made it back? The restless spirits would terrorize those who neglected them. Or so that's what They Wait wants you to believe.

The film stars Jaime King (Sin City), and centers on her son Sammy, as they return to Vancouver, from Shanghai to attend the funeral of an uncle. Considered by the community as a "bone collector", his death occurs eerily around the same time that the Chinese festival 'Ghost Month' is in full swing. Like any good ghost story, Sammy begins to see spirits around his uncle's house located in Chinatown. It's soon revealed that his family's old manufacturing and importing business holds some shady secrets. Martial arts legend Pei-pei Cheng (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), plays Sammy's strict Aunt, and Michael Biehn (Terminator, Aliens), plays a photographer, with two short scenes in the entire film.

I really wanted to hate this film. I really did. After hearing that Doctor Uwe Boll was attached to the production as Executive Producer, one has to wonder what sort of film has been cooked up. It received some lukewarm reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, and though at first glance, the ghostly thriller might seem like another 'killer' Uwe Boll Production, They Wait, manages to be anything but the German filmmaker's style. Directed by Ernie Barbarash, a director and producer of various film/tv sequels, with a story/screenplay written by some guy who used to work on "The Outer Limits" tv series, this movie manages to float ever so slightly above a pile of shit, in fact it’s quite an entertaining film with the standard scares that will surely please horror fans.

The movie uses the formula commonly seen in western remakes of Japanese horror films. Placing a Caucasian female lead in unfamiliar cultural situations, to give us the viewer, a window into the unknown as outsiders. Jaime King is not only gorgeous, but she held the film together with a pretty convincing performance as a mother driven to near insanity trying to figure out what's going on with her son. It works for the most part. The film isn't terrible, nor is it mind blowing. It has moments of bad acting, and slow pace, but it has enough scary stuff in there to make it a memorable film. I give the writer credit for telling a different kind of ghost story with Chinese folklore in a western setting. Kudos to the director for pulling it off.

It is almost entirely a Canadian production, priding itself in its Vancouver locations, Visual Effects talent, production crew, and Symphony orchestra, Uwe Boll's influence on the movie, wasn’t really a creative one. Who knows, having his name attached to the film might make it easier to distribute this movie if ever it makes it to regular theaters. Then again, it might backfire. In any case, this movie is worth watching when it comes out on DVD.

Related: VIFF screening: The Band's Visit, and Malos Habitos (Bad Habits).