First
King: Birth Of An Empire
(2019 w/DVD*)/The Gangster
The Cop The Devil
(2019*)/Killer Crocodile
(1989/Severin Blu-ray)/Kung
Fu League (2018
w/DVD/*all Well Go Blu-rays)/Wills
and Burke (1985/Umbrella
Region 4 PAL Import DVD)
Picture:
B+ & C+/A-/B/B+ & C+/C- Sound: B+ & C+/B/B-/B+ &
C+/C Extras: C/B/C+/D/D Films: B+/A-/C+/A-/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Wills
and Burke
Import DVD is now only available from our friends at Umbrella
Entertainment in Australia, can only play on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD
players that can handle Region 4-locked PAL DVD and can be ordered
from the link below.
The
following films take place overseas and offer action, thrills and
even comedy...
Romulus
and Remus are the fabled story of two brothers, inseparable and
together the help build one of histories greatest empire, Rome. But
before the greatest city in the world, they were two shepherd boys
and the road to building Rome was full or blood ...and sacrifice in
Matteo
Rovere's The
First King: Birth Of An Empire
(2019).
Romulus
and Remus were brothers but before their rise to building one of
history's greatest (or worst, depending on your views) Empire. They
were slaves, forced to fight one another they instead killed their
captors and set the slaves free. Together the united the other slave
to start a revolution. However, they received a prophecy that they
will become kings, but one brother will have to kill the other.
Remus believed leaders means power and to have power means fear and
he decides to challenge the prophecy and the will of the 'gods' and
he won't kill his brother. Romulus on the other hand believes in
order to lead people and be a king, you must win the heart's of
people to must preserve their culture, customs, and beliefs. If you
keep destroying other peoples culture, take away people's rights, you
might rule by fear but sooner or later someone else will kill you.
This
is about one of the most famous stories of two brothers, symbolic of
how together they were able to survive incredible odds, together they
were unstoppable, they were 'blessed' by the gods to build the one of
the greatest empires in the world. They, however, are only matched
by their greatest tragedy to kill one another. Extras include a
Making of the Movie featurette and trailers.
When
a serial killer stalks the streets in the night, mob boss Jang
Dong-su barely escapes with his life, but afterwards his reputation
as a ruthless leader is shattered. He is forced to team up with
Detective Jung Tae-seok, together they must hunt and stop the killer.
They share information, resources and man power but their 'deal' is
who ever finds him first gets to keep him in Lee
Won-tae's The
Gangster The Cop The Devil
(2019).
Mob
Boss Jang Dong-su runs the criminal underworld, no purse, no throat
is cut without his say so, he even owns the police (which pisses off
Detective Jung to no end). But when a serial killer nearly kills
him, his reputation as a leader is called into question and the city
begins to fall into fear and chaos. With a serial killer on the
loose, no one is safe, guilty or innocent. Jang teams up with hard
headed Detective Jung (who's been a pain in his side trying to bust
his operations) and Jung's only reason to work with Jang is he wants
the killer more badly than he wants to see Jang behind bars.
However, the killer is far more clever than the mob and police give
him credit for, even when both mob and police are after him and
instead of running or hiding he continues killing and taunting them
in to a dangerous cat and mouse game, are they hunting him ...or is
he hunting them?
This
was an action filled drama movie, a movie about bad cops working with
bad guys to bring down someone even worst than them. Both the cops
and the mob become vigilantes and they work together taking justice
into their own hands when the normal methods don't work. Extras
include making of the film, the characters and trailers.
Larry
Ludman's
Killer
Crocodile
(1989) is a very belated take-off of Spielberg's Jaws
(1975), but is one of the more amusing of now dozens of take-offs and
not as seen. However, Severin has restored it with a 2K scan from
the original 35mm camera negative and it is amusing and looks better
than you might expect.
The
title monster starts eating tourists on a sunny island and news is
slow to travel at first about the killings, but a group of young
people (including one played by Richard Crenna's son) and some older
persons in the know (including Van Johnson, in full blast MGM
studio-days mode stealing his scenes without trying) as they slowly
figure out what is doing the killing and how can they stop it.
Needless to say it needs to be ASAP or the vacation is going to end
for everyone on the island.
Shameless
in its ripping off of some of the plot points of Jaws,
its still not as blatant as the it could have been and the monster is
a hoot. Especially deep in the CGI digital animation era, this looks
fake, but it is still fun. It is shot better than you might expect
and is worth a look for what does work. Nice it was so ambitious for
a B-movie.
A
special limited edition of this film includes its sequel, so get that
while supplies last, but this version includes
separate interview featurettes with Richard Anthony Crenna (Of
Crocodiles and Men),
Makeup FX Artist Giannetto De Rossi (In
The Jaws Of The Crocodile),
Actor Pietro Genuardi (The
Fearless Crocodile Hunter),
Cinematographer Federico Del Zoppo (It
Crawls)
and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
What
happens when you take the greatest martial arts masters in history
and put them together? Wong Fei-hung, Chen Zhen, Bruce Lee and IP
Man find themselves brought to the future and now must somehow find a
way home. But things aren't going to be easy and they find
themselves in a modern day world wide Wushu contest in Jeffrey
Lau's Kung
Fu League
(2018).
When
comic artist Ying Xiong (Hero) finds himself unable to chase
after the girl of his dreams, he makes a wish for the 4 greatest
martial arts master in history to help him Wong Fei-hung, Chen Zhen,
Bruce Lee and IP Man. It turns out Ying Xiong want them to train him
to win the world wide Wushu tournament and help him win the girl.
But secretly, Ying Xiong's rival has gathered the world's top martial
artists to create the ultimate Kung Fu armor, a futuristic armor that
can learn and defeat any martial art master.
This
was a action filled comedy with the whole idea who is/was the
greatest martial art master in history. While they might be the
greatest martial arts masters in history, they one thing they can't
stop is being the hero and the future. But in the end, can the old
beat the new? Extras include trailers.
Finally
we have Bob Weis' Wills
and Burke
(1985) which is the c0moedy spoof version of the historical 1860 trip
by the title characters (Garry McDonald, Kim Gyngell) taking a
then-dangerous trip across the continent with disastrous results, but
wants to play it like a Western spoof. Thus, I can see why it is
considered Oz-Ploitation, though it is only so amusing. A young
Nicole Kidman, character actors like Peter Collingwood and Men At
Work lead singer Colin Hay all show up, but this never really goes
anywhere.
Maybe
I'm missing some jokes since I do not know the whole story or how
people from down under think of this event today, if at all, but I
found it choppy and not adding up to much except as some kind of
curio. It was a home video hit, but I had not heard of it before and
in this case, I can see why. Only catch it if you are very, very
interested.
There
are no extras.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on all three
HD-shot Well Go releases look good and clean, even if they can have
motion blur here and there, but the
anamorphically enhanced image on the DVD versions on King
and Kung
are on the soft and weak side.
With
that said, the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer
on Killer can show the age of the materials used, but it was
shot better than you might expect on Kodak 35mm color negative films
(including 5247) and processed by the Italian lab Telecolor, making
this one of the few solid examples of the nice color they offered.
It makes this different from other Jaws wanna-bees and looks
impressive on even Ultra HDTVs in this respect. Sometimes the film
looks a little definition, detail or color weak with moire grain, but
that is rare. Overall, a pleasant surprise and more great work by
Severin.
Unfortunately,
the Wills DVD is from a really, really old PAL videomaster
with plenty of analog videotape flaws including video noise, video
banding, telecine flicker, tape scratching, PAL cross color, faded
color, tape damage, aliasing errors and staircasing. This has a
quality disclaimer, but the film starts out letterboxed in a 1.33 X 1
frame, then goes full 1.33 X 1, but its hard to tell if it is tunnel
vision loosing the original frame or not. Oh well. Down several
generations, it looks bad and the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
barely has any surrounds and plenty of background noise. Hope they
can save this film at some point, because it is bad here.
The
three Well Go Blu-rays have nice DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1
lossless mixes as you would expect with solid soundfields, but the
King
and Kung
DVD's lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes are weak and loose more of the
soundmaster than expected.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 lossless mix on Killer
is more effective in its English track version than the Italian one,
but they are both here for fans and completists.
To
order the
Umbrella import Wills
and Burke
DVD, go to this link for it and other hard to find releases:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo (Killer,
Wills)
and Ricky Chiang