Nova Seed

 

Nova Seed

Director ~ Nick DiLiberto

2016, Japan-Canada

Writers ~ Joe DiLibertoNick DiLiberto

Stars ~ Joe DiLiberto, Nick DiLiberto, Shawn Donovan

 

 

With a nonsensical, unrelated tagline, ‘Nova Seed’s story is the kind of thing derived from sci-fi pulp of influences like ‘Heavy Metal’ or ‘Métal hurlant’. That is, it has juvenile sensibility in that you have a mute brute-saviour lion-man mutant, a power-source that’s a naked woman without agency, a bum-chin gladiator, and a bad guy called Mindskull (I mean…). But the narrative tears along, benefiting from the shorter runtime, is mostly action set-pieces at a steady jog, stays terse and doesn’t get bogged down in backstory. There’s no need to engage brain as the story wholly honours tropes in a heady and joyous nostalgic recreation of its influences – the vibe of 80s kids cartoons and Bakshi are evident. There is no anime-like insistence on its own superficial emotional weight through melodrama.

 

It is reminiscent of doodles on a genre-crazy teen’s pad, where the world-building is informed by tropes. And this doodle-like vibe is a chief pleasure. This is predominantly the work of Nick DiLiberto, his brother Joe and some friends, and for that, it’s impressive. The animation goes from the simplistic character design to dense art design, shimmering a little like ‘Roobard and Custard’; but there is also excellent composition and fluid image movement, and similarly the colour-scheme goes from felt-tip bright to more subtle (for example, torchlight crossing scattered debris). Some 60,000 hand-drawn frames; 4 years in the making. 

 

Arena! A dogfight in the sky! The bad guy’s lair! There’s always something to entertain and there’s an obvious wealth of love gone into this; the details on the craft and decor – cyberpunky and junky – are a highlight (the nose-boned native more questionable). The most out-there and amateurish element is the sound design, which sounds like it was improvised and recorded on an old tape recorder: even electronics and crashes are vocalised (“beepbeepboop! BFFFFTtTt!!”). All this could have obviously been recorder slicker – the pumping contemporary electronic music and some sound effects are clear and dominant to demonstrate this – and yet even this uneven quality adds to the kids-at-play D.I.Y. ambiance, however crude.

 

And ultimately, it’s this built-from-scratch aesthetic mashed-up with its obvious filmmaking accomplishments, and the ambition of making it predominantly action-centred, that make it so winning and entertaining, overcoming any deficiencies, intended or otherwise. 

 

 

 

Sisu

Sisu

Writer & Director - Jalmari Helander

2023, Finland-United Kingdom

Stars - Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan

 

A grizzled prospector finally finds gold in the last days of WWII, but then he runs into Nazis and they want it too.

 

Both Jalmari Helander’s ‘Rare Exports’ and ‘Big Game’ felt like premises that were enjoyable near-misses. ‘Sisu’ is the same, in that there’s the feeling that it could have been so much more, that’s its underselling its assets. Although as splendid as it looks, as fun as its WWII/Spaghetti Western mash-up is, it perhaps errs on the side of forsaking any grounding in reality. Although there is initial excitement at the idea of all this playing out in a wasteland where there’s nowhere to run, it rapidly emerges that such problems are solved by indulging in the trend of shrugging off any semblance of realism: he gets hung but it’s clear by that point that he will survive with movie immunity. (And to think I once had issues with ‘Die Hard’ coz I didn’t think it was realistic that they could hug just after he had surely savaged his back by swinging through a window.) When the impossible thing occurs in ‘No One Lives’ happens, it’s hilarious in its audaciousness; when audaciousness is the default here, the surprise and humour wanes. The early minefield game-of-wits stays just the right side, even with the mine-frisbee (that’s funny), but by the end our guy would be dead twenty time over at least. The impossibility of it all and the outrageousness is good for a few chuckles, and we are not expecting total allegiance to plausibility, not at all, but when it becomes apparent that nothing is really at stake, we’re left just with Nazi-bashing and minimal investment.

 

But it’s done really well, and that’s the thing. There’s Helander regulars Jorma and Onni Tommila, with the former holding it all together with a relentlessly stern gaze in place of dialogue. Although Aksel Hennie does match him as a memorable Nazi visage. Kjell Lagerroos’ cinematography is excellent; the pacing is steady instead of frenetic; it’s gleefully pulpy. Not quite as dumb-hijinx as, say, ‘Mad Heidi’, not quite as daftly po-faced as John Wick, but in the same playpens: somewhere between the horror genre’s outrageousness and the action genre’s foregoing of realism. And, despite the tagline, he's not avenging anything, really - although it gets "golden" in there - as he's just killing for the shiny stuff.

 

It’s good-looking fun, at least.