Overview: Ultraviolet is the ultimate example of style over substance. At every juncture, the goal is to create a futuristic music video piece more than it is to convey an interesting story. That said, some of the visuals are pretty damn cool! The pacing generally tries to stay fast enough to help the viewer forget about the plot holes, and even though the overall movie is predictable, you still find yourself smiling in spite of yourself and enjoying some of the way over-the-top fight scenes.

The Story: Ultraviolet takes place in the near-future, a time where terrorism is no longer the scourge of society – now it’s viruses. The worst virus is one that turns humans into Hemophages - this virus, created in a laboratory designed to create super-soldiers, is now air-borne, and has forced the population to take extreme precautions including wearing bird-flu virus masks at all times. Hemophages have vampire-like teeth and been genetically modified, giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence. Unfortunately, with these extra-human capabilities, they need blood to replenish themselves (this is barely mentioned in the movie), and their bodies slowly wasteaway.

To the government’s dismay, more and more of the population are being transformed, and, as a civil war looms, they have set out to rid the world of this new race that they now deem menaces to society. Violet, a former nurse at the facility, ended up losing her husband and unborn child when she accidentally contracted the virus. After being a live ginea-pig for the Medical control facility (who also control the new secret police force), Violet escapes and joins the underground Hemophage resistance in attempting to overthrow the medical control police, who are led by their Arch Cardinal, Daxus (played by Nick Chinlund) – and yes, the evil Christian symbolism is in full force here.

Although Violet has entered the last stages of her sickness, she is given one more mission – to capture the Medical Control’s latest weapon from their headquarter facility and either bring it back or destroy it. After some insane action and escape sequences, Violet succeeds, but discovers that the “weapon” is in fact a small boy named “six” (Cameron Bright). This boy supposedly has genetically altered blood that, if released in the atmosphere, will wipe out all hemophages forever. Her maternal instincts kick and, and she betrays the Hemophage resistance, and is no pursued by both the resistance and the police. The only one she can turn to is her trusted friend and genetic doctor, Garth (played by William Fichtner). But the boy is dying and all options appear hopeless. Because of this, Violet (and the audience) continually says, “What am I doing?”

The Action – Gun-kata is Back! Equilibrium fans will be happy to see Gun-kata return with a vengeance. Mila Jovovich generally looks terrific doing it – better than Christian Bale (her belly, which is always visible when kicking butt is definitely CUTE!). It’s clear that Mila has trained hard for the part, and looks good on both the gun and sword fight scenes. The problem though is that an unbelievable MI:2 feeling saturates the action scenes. Mila’s powers border on supernatural, and her nazi-like opponents make the OT Storm Troopers seem like special forces! They are ALWAYS flat-out incompetent in every way possible. Additionally, even though it looks cool, there is never a reason for the sword fights which becomes all the more apparent when, literally seconds later, people come in with Uzzis and spray bullets everywhere.

The FX: The FX in Ultraviolet are truly hit or miss. It appears as if pretty much the whole movie (or vast chunks of it) has been filmed on blue-green screens. This in itself is not a problem. The problem comes in that some scenes are rendered wonderfully while others come off as half done. It’s almost as if they ran out of money during the post-production phase and had to wrap up what they had and package it as best they could. This is a shame because the shots that are completed look wonderful. The attention paid to the colors palettes in virtually every seen is extraodinary. Sometimes I caught myself staring slack-jawed in enjoyment; yet others I was almost holding my nose in disgust.

The Soundtrack: From beginning to end, Ultraviolet plays like a music video. You get awesome action mixed with high-energy soundtracks. Sometimes you get the wasping highpitched chants, similar to Gladiator or MI:2, and for other scenes, we get bass-thumping, percussive tracks which help move the action along.

The Acting: Both Jovovich and Cameron Bright are serviceable. William Fichtner is decent for the little screentime he has, but Nick Chinlund is just sour. He has a constant snear, and his performance continually serves to solidify the already one-dimensional “evil bad guy” nature of his character. But truly, Wimmer just does not give his stars much to work from. Virtually the entire story is a sequence of visuals. While Jovovich seems to excel in this mode, keeping mostly believable facial expressions for the bulk of her acting, Chinlund pretty much sucks at it, and seems to struggle in finding the appropriate demeanor.

What’s Missing? The whole front end of the story for Ultraviolet seems to have been cut, and in its place, we get a synopsis similar to what we see on TV shows recapping episodes that related to the current episode (e.g., “Previously, on Lost….”). Truly, the amount of time it took you to read my two paragraphs above on the story equals the amount of time they devoted to the front-end exposition. It looks like a good 20 minutes or so was boiled down into a 2 minute quick-cut scene to allow us to jump into the action headfirst. But by doing so (again, I’d bet money that this stuff was shot, and furthermore, that we get it on an extended DVD), Ultraviolet significantly cheapens an already weak storyline. Any depth in the characters are lost. Additionally, some of the adds, the BMW adds in particular, really are a bit too overt.

The Gadgets: As weak as the story is, some of the gadgets in Ultraviolet are just awesome! They really do add a pretty fun dimension to the movie. They include things such as:

• Disposable Cell Phone Dispenser: I LOVE the idea of a disposable cell phone dispenser - cell phones are “wafer-thin” and bendable – you insert your credit card, and similar to a paper receipt, a cell phone sheet comes out with a certain number of minutes on it.
• Virtual Storage: Ultraviolet also has a believable looking D&D “Bag of Holding” that can be embedded in the body. I think the idea is that Nanotechnology allows the molecules to break down into some other substance, but can be put back-together into guns and swords.
• Multi-colored clothes: I fully expect this idea to take hold. Similar to the nano-couch in One Point O, clothes and hair in Ultraviolet can change color at will.
• Sunglasses: Yes, Ultraviolet WILL prompt sunglasses sales – bank on it! They are the symbol for “coolness” in movies now, and ultraviolet raises the bar here by making them multifunctional.
• HologramsThe holograms, used to making moving imitations of people, similar to those in Ghost in the Shell, are terrific. Wimmer creates some great “break-up” FX for them that really seem to add to their believability.

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for cool style over substance, Ultraviolet is one to watch. But while some of the sequences in Ultraviolet are breathtaking, the movie as a whole is not a good one. What little story there is seems to have been lost in editing. Still, some of the visuals are pretty cool, and may be reason enough for you to go watch this. If you’re a Jovovich fan, or want to see more cool Gun-kata scenes, you will enjoy Ultraviolet. But if you’re looking for a deeply textured cyberpunk story, look elsewhere. One point extra granted for the cool gadgets.

Overview: If you’ve been hankerin for a nice quality ultra-surrealistic medium-core porn Japanese cyberpunk flick, then look no further than I.K.U. Japanese cyberpunk movies are all about no boundaries and I.K.U. takes this notion to heart, coming up high on the wierd shitometer scale. For the soft-core goods, you get a bit of everything here: guy-on-girl, guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, girl-on-transgender, voyeuristic sex through a fish tank while eating sushi, sex in a spider-web…well, you get the idea. And while if what you’re looking for is naked body parts, I.K.U. definitely delivers (some cases its pixelated out, but in most cases its definitely NOT pixelated out, even when you wish it was…). Fair warning though - this is NOT a “take care of yourself” type movie, as you will spend most of the time dumbfounded while watching it. I.K.U is an EXTREMELY strange, but well-done mind-fuck, pure and simple.

I.K.U. takes place in a very strange near-future Japan and follows a day in the life of a sex-roid from the GENOM corporation, who has the ability to change her outside shape to mimic different female body types. Her job is to collect “sexual experiences” by engaging in sexual acts with various people. The experiences are collected in order to produce virtual reality-like I.K.U. chips that are then sold in vending machines. The idea is that people can buy the chips and then “wire in” on the sexual encounter. Unfortunately, a rival corporation has developed rival androids who’s job is to insert a virus into the sex-droids and steal their “experiences” so that it can make its own rival chips.

But truly, the story is not the reason you get this. In fact, the visuals distract you so much from the story that I strong recommend reading the story bits on the extras prior to watching this film. The reason you watch this is for the extremely weird but interesting set designs and cinematography. Every “vignette” offers some truly interesting cyberpunk visuals. Shocking neon is the order of the day here. Shocking “you” is the point of the film.

The Bottom Line: If you’re a “no boundaries” kind of film watcher, and are interested in something WAY off the beaten path, give I.K.U. a try. Just to be clear, I.K.U. opened at the Sundance Film Festival, so again, this is not your average skin flick - this is an artsy skin flick. And honestly, rating this film is a complete waste of time, as I really have nothing to compare it to (I’m giving it a 6, just because…).

PS - one word of caution - the guy-on-guy oral sex scene is one that is NOT pixelated out, nor is the scene with the transgender (I think that’s what he is…a guy with an “in-between” part). Both only last for a few seconds or two, but are QUITE graphic if you get my drift…

Again, I could go on, but truly, commentary is a waste of time on a flick like this. What you need to evaluate whether you want to see this or not are screen captures. On to Page 2 of this review if you are so inclined. Fair warning - while I worked hard not to show any body parts, page 2 is clearly meant for adults.

Page 2: Screencaps–>>

Overview: Cybercity, directed by the same guy who did the Marathon sequence in the Animatrix, is a pretty fun, but dated cyberpunk anime from 1990 that centers on 3 ultra-tough criminals who agree help the police kill the bad guys. They get these explosive collars installed (see above) and are given time limits for each mission - if they exceed the time limit - BOOM! There goes their head!

There are three stories on the DVD that I have - each centering on one of the three heroes. The stories aren’t that bad, and some of the animation is fairly decent considering the time. LOTS of shots have the US 80s cartoon look, but every now and then, you find some pretty cool cyberpunk visuals thrown in the mix. Here’s a sampling of some of the better visuals:

The Bottom Line: Again, nothing spectacularly breathtaking from either a visual, story, or philosophical standpoint, but this is clearly a decent low-budget attempt. Give it a try if you’ve got nothing better to watch. By the way, if someone knows where I can get the rest of the shows (assuming there were any), please let me know, as I’ve only seen the first three.

Overview: OK, so you don’t have a huge budget or any orginal ideas but you still want to make a cool Scifi flick? Answer: Just merge together little bits from lots of popular scifi movies, and make sure you get good actors with nice chemistry. This is in essence what Yamazaki has done. He’s literally taken E.T., the Terminator futuristic dystopia time travel thing, only he substitued Independance Day Aliens (and their technology) that look like E.T. for the exterminators, and a cute asian chick for Reece. Add in an asian mafia group to mix things up, and to top it all off, Yamazaki stole matrix-like action and cinematography looks to bring this project all together.

Truly, this movie has grown on my since I first watched it. And looking at it from a cyberpunk lens, it truly fits well. While on the surface, this idea of merging every popular scifi movie together into one might appear to be a complete and utter mess, but it sorta works as an enjoyable, present day cyberpunk flick. Even wierder than the grand larceny of the various movies is the overt nods to many of the scenes from those movies. Yamazaki isn’t hiding anything here - he knows that we will know he has stolen all his key elements. So instead of shoving this under the “plot” table, a number of the scenes are literally duplicate nods from these movies. This more than anything rises Returner up from the run-of-the-mill copycats to something more interesting - almost Tarantino like, but far more overt.

The Story: Milly (Anne Suzuki) is an average foot soldier serving in the last gasp of mankind, 80 years in the future where alien invaders have all but wiped out humananity. As a last gasp effort to save the human race, a group of scientists have been trying to develop a time travel machine to send someone back to when the aliens first arrived - they believe it was the first alien that called the others to destroy the earth, so if they could just go back in time and kill it, maybe the rest would not have come. Through an odd twist of fate, Milly ends up being the one sent back to save Mankind.

Milly hooks up with this two-bit hoodlum named Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who has devoted his life to avenging his childhood friend’s death at the hands of the local mafia. Milly coerces Miyamoto into helping her find the alien who recently crash landed so she can kill it. The story gets convoluted when the mafia gets involved - they see power in the alien’s weapontry. From there, the chase is on to both avenge the mafia and find and deal with the alien.

The Acting: Again, while this wierd amalgomation of big production scifi films could turn out to be an utter mess, its the chemistry between Milly and Miyamoto which saves it. They are wonderful together. On second viewing, I found I liked their chemistry even more. Also, the evil mafia leader, Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani) is pretty fun as an over-the-top bad guy. He does everything from blow away little kids, to engaging in gratuitous breast groping, to conducting repeated attempts at gangster coolness.

The FX: Even though they are low budget, they work. Even the matrix-like coolness effects work to some extent. The problem is getting around the obvious thefts that are put in, albeit in a different light. Its hard, for instance, to see E.T. as the bad guy. The surround sound FX are also pretty well done, with nice positional FX and good deep bass.
The Action: Again, think Matrix Rip-off here, complete with the various high kicks into people, along with your average asian gangster shootout movies. We also get some fun little ID4 alien technology fights, force field and all. While not original, it’s at least consistently well done. And while the story and action are well enough put together to keep you engaged, again, its really the interplay between Milly and Miyamoto that makes this movie work. Their performances make you care for these two characters far more than you should. I would almost liken it to a Jonny Depp-like saving of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, there’s a wonderful little time-travel twist at the end which is truly heartwarming.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!: By the way, if you get this movie, for Godsakes, whatever you do, DON’T use the english dubbing. We’re talking 70s chop-saki bad movie dubbing here!

The Bottom Line: Returner is one of those hard ones to judge in that it has some clear sucky elements (no original ideas, for instance). But just as clearly, the director both realizes this and plays off it. Moreso, the performances by the two leads make returner easily watchable. Again, fair warning, we’re not talkin masterpiece here, and had I not given it 6 stars, I probably would have dropped it down to 3 (meaning you either buy the director is doing the rip off in an intelligent way, or you decided this is just tacky in the extreme). But in the end I decided it is a decent low-budget movie that hits on enough cylinders to make it worthwhile.

Overview: Johnny Mnemonic has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, this movie has problems, not the least of which is having a name that I can never remember how to spell, but overall, this movie is just pure cyberpunk fun! Johnny Mnemonic has a terrific mix of “punk” and “cyber” although it definitely strays to the “punk” side of things. He we have corporate domination, punk rebellion, modified humans (and dolphins!), dystopian societies and all the rest, all wrapped up in some wonderfully inspired William Gibson visuals.

Johnny (played by cyberpunk zen master, Keanu Reeves) is a data courier who deals in somewhat shady and dangerous clients in need of data getting discretely transferred to another location. He has gotten a large chunk of his long term memory removed in order to have enough space to put a massive hard drive inside his head. Unfortuantely, his space isn’t large enough for his newest high paying customer, but he still takes the assignment even though there’s danger of data seepege into the brain. During the “transfer,” all hell breaks loose, with guns and bullets flying everywhere. Johnny is forced to flee, and eventually hooks up with a damaged bodygaurd played by Dina Meyer. Together they attempt to deliver the data from China to New Jersey, but unfortunately, SERIOUS complications arise when they find out what Johnny is actually holding in his head. Ice Tea and Takeshi Kitano also have notable roles in this flick.

The Bottom Line: Johnny M., while mostly a scifi thriller, has some terrific lines. For anyone who’s seen this, you will remember the “I want room service” scene. I still love that! While I can’t argue that this is a great movie, I do really enjoy it. Still, it clearly could have been better. But at least this is contrasted with a few really fun scenes.